Quote:
Originally Posted by wolf_bluejay
The chemist in me really really cringed at this. Saturating the salt water mix is bad idea.
This would work IF we were only using one salt, but the mix is just that, a mix. All the different chemicals that make up our fairly expensive salt do not saturate at the same levels.
This saturation is used sometimes to purify (removed unwanted salts) in many production chemicals. The NaCl would be almost the highest solubility. So you end up with just mostly NaCl and almost all the calcium and trace minerals would be what would precipitate out of solution.
Think of it this way -- if you dumped a whole lot of salt mix and pushed it to saturation, separated the precipitate out, add more salt mix and repeat -- you would have some expensive NaCl without much else in it.
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Yes this was my original concern with the method as well. However as mentioned I tested it long term on a reef tank with good success. I did not experience any precipitate and the levels in the display remained as consistent as the previous method of manually mixing and changing water.
When you think about it, it's no better or worse than how water is traditionally changed. Most people don't mix a full bucket of salt at once to insure optimal levels. Instead they grab a few scopes here and there which can result in different levels each time.