Best Sea Salt for Reef Tanks?

[milano07]

Originally Posted by Aquattro

I use Reefer's Best, it's a great salt. It's 100 bucks a box. IO is also a good salt, it costs half that. I'm probably going to switch. Used IO for years, never had a problem with it.

By the way, Instant Ocean is only $29 bucks at King eds, so that's more like one third of what you pay for the Reefer's Best salt.

I have personally used IO for years without any issues.

[MMAX]

H2Ocean hands down. After switching to this salt from IO I experienced great sps growth and color without dosing anything at all. Started with regular bi-weekly 20% water changes then cut back to 10%. Before I started dosing, my parameters were bang on except for the alk which was a bit low Recently started dosing Ca, Alk, & Mg, might try cutting back water changes to monthly to save a few bucks on salt.

[sphelps]

I've had success with virtually every salt I've tried and I think I've tried almost all of them. In the end I'm not sure it really matters but I currently use Reefer's Best because it's one of the few that mixes exceptionally well and has always been consistent. If I had to pay $100 or more for it I'd probably use something else but at $80 I'll continue to use it until the price increases or it becomes less available. I also prefer the box which is easily recycled, I have no need for more buckets.

IO is by far the cheapest and certainly works just fine but I find it requires more work. Takes longer to mix and sometimes needs to be aerated to prevent precipitation, especially if you plan on supplementing with it.