PDA

View Full Version : Salt selection


toddmau5
03/21/2014, 07:51 PM
I know this topic has been beat to absolute death of the years, over and over and over again. Some people swear their lives on certain salts, some people choose one, it works and thats what they stick with. I am thinking about changing salts, actually, I think I'm needing to change salts, so I was looking for a couple opinions. Currently I use Reef Crystals, I have been using reef crystals for about 7 months now. Every since day 1 my alkalinity has been 11. Calcium has always been really high at 500+. With no clear answers on how to lower the alkalinity with the calcium so high, the best answer was "it will come down on its own" Recently tho, now that I have all my other levels in check I need to get my alkalinity down as I am starting to get burnt tips on my sps. (i know high alk will cause tissue necrosis) The other night after water change my alk was 12dkh, my acros are not happy about this... One of the main reasons I chose reef crystals initially was the high magnesium level. The chaeto in my sump completely sucks my tank dry of mag. So I went with the highest mag level I could find and the dosing has been not so bad. I have been told that The next best thing I can do is to switch salts to get my alkalinity level down. A lot of people suggested to go with red sea regular salt. To the best of my search skills it looks like the red sea reg has an alkalinity of about 7dkh, but the magnesium is, if I remember correctly 1240? Which is just a little too low for my taste with the magnesium leach in my sump, I try to keep it up around 1450. So The questions is, is it better to switch to a salt with lower levels and just start the dosing life, or stick with what I have and find a way to get the alkalinity down?

Every1jockzjay
03/21/2014, 09:53 PM
When my coral started to grow my calcium and alk plumeted and even with water changes i have to dose my tank... Honestly reef crystals is justt as good as something 2x the price. Make sure all other params esp phosphate are way down and let the coraline algae and corals work on the calcium and alk, and u will want a salt with as much as both as u can find

Every1jockzjay
03/21/2014, 09:57 PM
How old is the tank, whats in it, whats ur params, and why isnt ur calc and alk dropping? Calc not changing to me is a clear sign phosphate or nitrates are inhibiting the growth in your tank and not letting coral use it up.. I maybe wrong but a decent stocked tank, even just coraline alone should lower ur calk alk and mag levels, this needing doseing or water changes to keep levels upp not down

toddmau5
03/22/2014, 05:00 AM
Easier then listing out all my corals and parameters, here is my tank profile
http://www.aquaticlog.com/aquariums/titanuranus/1
Should be able to see all of my parameter with back dates (i'm still trying to go through and enter the older ones) along with all my corals etc etc. If you can't view it, let me know and I'll just list them all here. Tank is mainly mixed reef but is slowly becoming SPS dominate. I don't know why the calcium and alk have been high. coraline growth is decent. The calcium is slowly coming down, as you can see on the chart. Now that the calcium is coming down I just started dosing calcium which brought my alk down to 10, another test later today should tell me where my alk and calcium are after the 3rd dose. I do 10% water change weekly and thats mainly just to replenish my mag and other levels. GFO reactor and chaeto keep the water pretty damn clean. I'm running the GFO because even tho my measurable phosphates are zero, I keep getting really nasty hair algae outbreaks.

dkeller_nc
03/22/2014, 07:18 AM
Well, here are a couple of thoughts.

After perusing your profile on Aquaticlog, it seems that you're changing a whole lot of water (20% every 4 days). With such a high amount of turnover, it's not surprising that your tank's water parameters might closely match your salt's initial make-up parameters.

Your profile mentions that you use a manual refractometer to check the tank's and new saltwater specific gravity. These need to be calibrated, not just zeroed with distilled/RODI water. I would recommend that you buy and use a standard refractometry standard if you don't already have it. The reason I mention this is that errors in specific gravity can inflate calcium, magnesium and alkalinity results over the expected values for seawater at 1.026 specific gravity.

Because of the large amount of corals you have in the tank, you're likely to have to start dosing once they grow a bit, since it will be difficult and quite expensive to maintain water parameters with water changes alone.

What I would suggest that you do is cut your water changes back to 10% per week, maximum, and monitor your calcium and alkalinity. More than likely, both parameters will slowly drift down to ranges that are more to your liking. If the 10% change per week with reef crystals isn't keeping up, it's time to buy some calcium chloride, sodium bicarbonate and perhaps magnesium chloride and start "2-part" dosing. You can get your start doing this without any equipment other than your test kits - you simply add the required amount of calcium chloride and sodium bicarbonate solution once per day. Eventually, you can consider peristaltic pumps and a timer/controller, or a full-out, stand-alone dosing pump.

toddmau5
03/22/2014, 07:32 AM
The calculator is a little off, I'm only doing 10gals once a week,, I did a slightly large change a couple weeks ago because of an ammonia spike that came out of no where. Refractometer gets calibrated every two weeks or so. I do use a calibration fluid. I make sure the calibration fluid is at the temp of the tank as well. I dont mind dosing and I'm happy the tank is finally starting to use calcium, my main concern is gettin the alkalinity done which is where I was questioning the change in salt branda

dkeller_nc
03/22/2014, 07:45 AM
Changing salt brands is certainly one solution, though perhaps a more expensive one. A lot of us use instant ocean. While the alkalinity does start a bit high (around 10 dKH in my experience), leaving it to circulate for 48 hours or more tends to deplete it a bit. In my case, I add about a tablespoon of calcium chloride to each new 25 gallon batch of IO that I make, which has the effect of boosting the calcium to about 450 ppm and dropping the alkalinity to about 9 dKH.

I would suggest that you skip a water change, and see what your tank's Ca & Alk does over that 2-week period. My guess is that it will drop into a range more to your liking.

toddmau5
03/22/2014, 08:20 AM
I can do that, nitrates and phosphates usually stay at 0 with the chaeto, I just need to stay on top of magnesium, which is the main reason I do water changes, I was just thinking about maybe only doing 5 gal/wk

dkeller_nc
03/22/2014, 09:32 AM
Well, a couple of pounds of magnesium chloride from Bulk Reef Supply is pretty cheap, and will give you much more control over your mag concentration than water changes.

You don't by the way, need to mix magnesium chloride and magnesium sulfate to supplement your water. The 5:3 ratio of magnesium chloride to sulfate on Bulk Reef Supply's instructions is intended to balance out the excess chloride that results from dosing calcium chloride. The actual ratio of chloride to sulfate ions in seawater is about 9 to 1, so if you're not dosing calcium and alkalinity solutions, the slight excess of chloride ions in your tank water that will result from just using magnesium chloride will be negligible, particularly with your water change schedule.

hedgedrew
03/22/2014, 09:43 AM
Todd. I also think all these salts have too much alk and i switched to red sea in blue bucket. Ca420 and alk around 8 dkh and mg 1300. Very balanced and clean. I m very happy. Used dd and esv before and so far this is most balanced.

Gibsh
03/22/2014, 05:13 PM
http://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/03/23/5ujyze2u.jpg

Just got this home today(great workout haha!), it seems so balanced, have no idea how the levels subside yet but I've heard this is the creme de le creme of salts.

Jerzey
03/22/2014, 05:21 PM
I can do that, nitrates and phosphates usually stay at 0 with the chaeto, I just need to stay on top of magnesium, which is the main reason I do water changes, I was just thinking about maybe only doing 5 gal/wk

magnesium is easy to make at home and it'll save you alot of money..... add 3 cups epsom salt and 5 cups magnesium chloride to a 1 g milk jug toped off with ro water (randy holmes recipe)

toddmau5
03/22/2014, 05:23 PM
magnesium is easy to make at home and it'll save you alot of money..... add 3 cups epsom salt and 5 cups magnesium chloride to a 1 g milk jug toped off with ro water (randy holmes recipe)

Agreed, I have Randy's recipes hanging on the wall, calcium chloride in the garage and I need to pick up some epsom salts

dkeller_nc
03/23/2014, 07:15 AM
Guys, there's something to realize about Randy's recipe - the ratio of sulfate to chloride ions in the magnesium mix is only correct if you're dosing calcium chloride and sodium carbonate/bicarbonate. If you're not, there's quite a large excess of magnesium sulfate in it. If all you are doing is supplementing magnesium in a magnesium-poor salt mix, you need a whole lot less magnesium sulfate (Epsom salts) than the recipe indicates.

ca1ore
03/23/2014, 08:37 AM
I have used most of the commercially available salt mixes and frankly cannot reliably distinguish between them when using tank condition as a proxy. Have had tank success with most brands, along with problems; suggesting that it probably makes no difference which one you use. I have heavy SPS and a number of large clams, so regardless of the initial levels, I end up needing to dose. So, if I'm going to have to dose anyway, I figure I might as well save a few bucks on salt so I use bog standard IO.

Jerzey
04/04/2014, 04:15 PM
Guys, there's something to realize about Randy's recipe - the ratio of sulfate to chloride ions in the magnesium mix is only correct if you're dosing calcium chloride and sodium carbonate/bicarbonate. If you're not, there's quite a large excess of magnesium sulfate in it. If all you are doing is supplementing magnesium in a magnesium-poor salt mix, you need a whole lot less magnesium sulfate (Epsom salts) than the recipe indicates.

that's a good point and something i'm sure lots of reefers over look... at the same time anyone who uses randy's recipes is usually dosing all 3 parts not using his recipe for dosing just one parameter

Randy Holmes-Farley
04/04/2014, 05:31 PM
Yes, there's a specific different recipe for that (although using the other probably won't cause any issues):

Do-It-Yourself Magnesium Supplements for the Reef Aquarium
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-07/rhf/index.php

from it:

3. A certain mixture of magnesium chloride and magnesium sulfate has no net effect on seawater's major anions (chloride and sulfate). All that is necessary for such a recipe is to add these two ingredients in such a ratio that they add chloride and sulfate in the ratio naturally present in seawater (which is 7.1 to 1 on a weight basis and 9.6 to 1 on a per ion basis).

To perfect such a recipe, it's imperative to know the amounts of sulfate in Epsom salts (39%), the amount of chloride in magnesium chloride hexahydrate (34.9%), and their bulk densities, because most aquarists will use a volume based measurement (1.05 g/cm3 for Epsom salts and 0.85 g/cm3 for magnesium chloride hexahydrate solids). Taking all these factors into account, the desired volume ratio is 10:1, MAG flake to Epsom salts, as a supplement; for instance, 10 cups MAG flake and 1 cup Epsom salts.

Jerzey
04/04/2014, 06:03 PM
Thank you for clarifying randy!