Its fine to take a company's word but that doesn't discredit the research done by independent researchers. Aquarium Systems (makers of Instant Ocean and Maxijets) has a good reputation but when they claim to build efficient protein skimmers, can we take their word based on reputation of the company? You might think the Pope has a reputation and we should take his word but what if you aren't Christian? Let's agree that the S-15 is bogus and look at the other research (experiments and water analysis) done by the researchers Atkinson, Bingman, Shimek.
Its not hard for me to believe that some salt mix has 50 times more copper than NSW because 50 times nearly 0 is still nearly 0. The amount of copper in the ocean is negligible and 50 times that is still insignificant to most animals other than the most sensitive ones such as larvae. I've put copper medication before into my tank with shrimps and crabs and haven't lost any. Let's keep an open mind and see both sides (you mentioned above that you hadn't look at the research yet). No one is saying that Kent is trying deceive us. All we know is that in various controlled experiments, some animals died in greater numbers in certain salt mixes than others. Its only natural then to look for differences between 2 salts and try to determine cause and effect. If the salts did not cause the differences in mortality, can you think of another cause?
For the record, no one has stated for a fact that copper is killing the larvae. Even Dr. Shimek is not saying 100% that it is defintely copper. I wouldn't be shocked if we later find out that Bio-Sea and Crystal Sea salts has the same level of copper as Kent in future tests. All I am convinced of is that more larvae died in some salt mixtures over the other in the experiments all else equal. And I'm fairly confident of the RELATIVE measured numbers from Atkinson and Bingman unless there is a good reason why they might be false.
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Originally Posted by BCOrchidGuy
Gazza, I'm pretty sure this will never end.... hey if there really was one best salt the others would go out of business.
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My feeling is that even if one salt is better than the others, the other would not go out of business. This is already the case with most products. Some skimmers are better than others, some cars are better than others, some computers and video cards, etc are better than others.