Salt for a beginner

[Madonia]

what’s everyone’s view on Red Sea salt?

I picked some up as part of a recommendation

this weekend will be my first go at making my own water

I want a salt that’ll provide adequate trace elements; where I don’t need to worry about additives just yet

I’m new to the hobby, for right now I need to keep things as simple as possible.......

 

[Hemmdog]

Red Sea is pretty good, is the bucket blue or black?

 

[vetteguy53081]

I love red sea salt and the results it produces. Used it for almost 4 years until changing concepts and would use it again if I needed to. It was the coral pro blend I used

 

[OREGONIC]

I like the blue bucket. The black bucket has way to high of elevated levels for me.

 

[Pancake]

I started with Red Sea pro also! Really liked it, but now using tropic marin pro. All the salts have their pros and cons. I chose redsea pro for the exact same reason as you because I wanted a capable salt while getting my feet wet. I didn't want to worry about things that i wasn’t ready for like dosing etc, but still wanted to be able to keep whatever I wanted. Red Sea Pro served me well. Since then I’ve switched to tropic marin pro because I think the most important thing for me is to know as much as possible what I’m putting in the tank and reducing contaminants. It’s easy to add things in but terribly hard to remove things especially if you don’t know what you added. For me tropic marin is the cleaner salt so that’s why I switched to it. If this is a concern for you try putting your salt mix in a gallon bottle and let it sit for about 3 months and see what settles. You will be very surprised. Also I highly recommend 0tds water. To me it’s the single most important thing you can do and the biggest bang for your hard earned bucks imho.

 

[Madonia]

Red Sea is pretty good, is the bucket blue or black?

Blue bucket

 

[Madonia]

Red Sea is pretty good, is the bucket blue or black?

Blue bucket

 

[Bpb]

Blue bucket is a great salt. If you need to supplement anything on a regular basis, salt mix wouldn’t really matter anyway. But it’s a good consistent well made salt

 

[canadianeh]

How about Tropic Marin salt?

 

[Pancake]

How about Tropic Marin salt?

Great Salts, personally very satisfied. I use it because I believe in the value it brings. At the basic level I think majority of the salt with decent review will grow coral. At the practical level I think we should choose a salt that is closest to our desired parameters. At the optimization level I think we should pick the cleanest salt because salt parameters won’t matter as much since your going to dose anyway. For me tropic marin pro is a good choice because it has solid levels for calc and mag. This has the benefit of keeping base parameters more stable during water change. I struggled with the idea that alk is lower than I like to keep for this salt, but in practice it hasn’t been an issue since I dose. Imo reduced contaminant is what I would be focused on when buying a salt since you have efficient methods to control parameters, but methods to export unknown contaminants from salt is less efficient so that is why for me purity is King.

Also, although it is not necessary to dose to grow corals, you certainly will get better results when you dose as you have better control over your parameters. In conclusion, I think redsea and tropic marin salts are both great choices for beginners and pros alike. If the tropic marin pro alk of 7 is a concern, you can use classic and then switch over to pro when you dose, but I think both should be just fine.

 

[Super Fly]

Red Sea salt is fine but expensive and since ur tank is new, additives would not be of concern at this point. If you want simple, Instant Ocean regular salt is good and much lower price. u can use the $ saved for other reef things, which u'll run into often in this hobby especially when starting. As tank matures and u become familiar with livestock demand, then it can be decided whether to switch salt that has more additives vs dosing.

 

[jp_75]

Red Sea blue bucket is a great salt