What Salt Mix should I use?

[Biglew11]

All salt will grow coral just fine. Find a salt that mixes closest to the values you want. For a new tank with no corals you don't need high alkalinity yet. The high alkalinity salts are marketed more for people with lots of fast growing corals. I use red sea blue bucket.

 

[StlSalt]

IO Reef Crystals here because of the price. I've never used anything else, but this thread has me thinking I might want to experiment with different salts.

 

[Daddy-o]

Yes I did see the higher Alk but wondered why I need Alk that high? Maybe I should have mentioned this is a new setup and will be cycling with aqua scape and two clown fish for the first 4 months and no lights.

I was just correcting your first post that said it had an alk of 7-9

 

[Grimreefer89]

+1 for reef crystals... as far as it being dirty i rinse my trash can power head when im done. it takes less than 5 mins to clean and wipe it out, my can still looks new. but as others have said use a salt that fits the parameters your shooting for no point in having to dose if you can avoid it (smaller tank) with a WC. i haven't experimented with any other salts, i dont see a point in fixing whats not broken lol. so take my advice with a grain of reef crystals salt.

 

[rknapp]

You should take a look at this video from BRS:


They found not all salt mixes to what it says on the package for the same salinity levels. They normalized all this and the costs got a lot closer than at first glance looking just at what is on the package. That and the brown crud observations convinced me to move from IO which I was admittedly using for years. now using Tropic Marin Pro. Could not be happier. Mixes fast and clean, and my maintenance of water change gear has been greatly reduced. The $10 a month extra this costs me is a drop in the bucket in this hobby.

 

[ichthyoid]

HW Marine Reefer is pharmaceutical grade, mixes clear quickly, provides a complete & balanced panel of elements, costs $70 for a bag that mixes up about 130 gal at 1.026, and is sometimes on sale at 10% off.

Considering what most of us spend on tanks, equipment, livestock, utilities & food; a compromise on arguably the most important constituent in the system, to save a few bucks, may be short sighted, imo.

 

[StlSalt]

You should take a look at this video from BRS:


They found not all salt mixes to what it says on the package for the same salinity levels. They normalized all this and the costs got a lot closer than at first glance looking just at what is on the package. That and the brown crud observations convinced me to move from IO which I was admittedly using for years. now using Tropic Marin Pro. Could not be happier. Mixes fast and clean, and my maintenance of water change gear has been greatly reduced. The $10 a month extra this costs me is a drop in the bucket in this hobby.

It is one of the number 1 ingredients in our tanks after water. It should be an obvious thing to experiment with. Never really thought about it. R2R strikes again. I think they have Tropic Marin at my LFS, time for some experimentation.

 

[40g Nano]

im just being honest
what works is what works
there is no "best" there is just what works

 

[CMMorgan]

Been doing some research and wanted to get some input from everyone here at R2R.

Pro Reef Salt Mix - Tropic Marin $99.88(200Gal) $0.499 a gallon
Coral Pro - Red Sea Salt $34.22(55Gal) $0.622 a gallon
Reef Pro Mix - Fritz Aqua $69.99(200Gal) $0.349 a gallon

All basically have the same parameters Calcium 400-450, Magnesium 1350-1450, Alkalinity 7-9 and Potassium 400

I am leaning towards the Fritz for obvious reasons($$) but wanted to get more input.

Thanks,

1NC0GNITO

I've been using the Fritz Aqua Reef Pro Mix for the last year or so. I bought it because of the price, it's stated parameters and that kid on Instagram Coralfish12G had recommended it. I have struggles with ALK, it does not mix clean and I have that crud in my mixing bucket and my sump. I'm almost done with the box and about to start a new build. The new build will be trying Two Little Fishies. It's an experiment but I like that it is premixed, proportioned ... no settling so the mix is the same every time. I'm happy to report back later.... but I'm done with the Fritz Reef Pro Mix. It takes a long time to burn through the 200 gallon box ... that's a lot of crud.

 

[Jdubyo]

All salt will grow coral just fine. Find a salt that mixes closest to the values you want.

This is probably the best answer here. You can most definitely have a wall to wall sps dominant tank with any of the widely marketed salt brands. The question comes down to what parameters do you need or want and how much maintenance are you willing to do?

+1 for reef crystals... as far as it being dirty i rinse my trash can power head when im done. it takes less than 5 mins to clean and wipe it out, my can still looks new.

I agree that this does not sound like much as far as maintaining your mixing container. Do we know that everything that settles to bottom of our mixing container and sticks to our power heads are all of the impurities in the mix? I am not so sure. I believe (with nothing but anecdotal evidence for the record) that some of the impurities stay in the water itself and ultimately in the tank we pour so much time and money into perfecting.

I am not claiming this to be the wrong approach because it most certainly is not. I even started this hobby using Reef Crystals. I made the jump to a new salt because I wanted to see what else was out there. I had Reef Crystals working for me perfectly fine but the thought of coming across something that could work better swayed me towards the change. I stress the “could” in that sentence because there is no guarantee.

I am going to mention again that this is just my personal opinion and all of the popular salt brands are a viable option. For the sake of the OP, consider what all of us have said. Consider all the options you provided originally with the options that were suggested additionally. The salt is not going to make a huge difference in the end result. It will just be a different path to success.

 

[Clownfish_Boy]

The only difference I see is the amount of calcium added to the salt. Calcium-rich "reef" salts should reduce the need for Kalkwasser dosing.

 

[Cell]

I found this chart from the BRS salt video posted above incredibly helpful. I made the switch to TMP after realizing it's really not much more expensive than the others. For a 100G tank, it's less than $70 a year more than cheap IO.

 

[artieg1]

I tried Fritz (blue) for a year and was constantly battling low alkalinity with daily dosing. Went back to Reef Crystals, and I've stopped dosing because alk is always 8-9. Honestly, of all the things that seem to matter for corals, salt mix seems to be at the bottom of the list. There are so many important things to focus on instead.

 

[LeftyReefer]

I think the Live Aquaria salt is great and hard to beat but yet it hardly ever gets any mentions.
it mixes super fast and super clear. never anything left in the mixing bucket. and its cheap. $45 per bucket delivered from Petco. Petco sells the 48# bucket or the 55# box for the same price, your choice. When I mix the LA salt up to 35ppt, I get an alk of 8 with it, which is perfect.

 

[Cell]

Isn't LA salt just rebranded Fritz iirc?

 

[SMSREEF]

Use whatever salt mix will mix up to the parameters you want to keep. That way if you do a 10% or 90% water change, you don’t need to mess with anything other than make sure pH is similar.

I like Red Sea blue bucket for my tanks. Also use IO regular on my Quarantine tanks. Both mix up really nicely and I don’t notice any residue in my bucket. I used to use Red Sea coral pro but the Alk of 12 is way too high for my tank.

 

[StlSalt]

So I'm looking to try another salt. How slow is the process of switching? You start out 25% new 75% old salt and slowly changeover, or just go all new salt from day 1?

 

[ss30]

Instant Ocean for me

 

[SMSREEF]

So I'm looking to try another salt. How slow is the process of switching? You start out 25% new 75% old salt and slowly changeover, or just go all new salt from day 1?

It depends on what %water change you are doing, and if you still have left over salt you want to use.
If I was out of my old salt and only changing 5-10% water, I would just buy the new salt and use that. Larger water changes, I would mix some old and some new.

 

[StlSalt]

It depends on what %water change you are doing, and if you still have left over salt you want to use.
If I was out of my old salt and only changing 5-10% water, I would just buy the new salt and use that. Larger water changes, I would mix some old and some new.

Thanks. I usually do 10% a week. I still have a bunch of IO RC salt so I'll probably do a slow roll over. Had some credit at an online site, so I'm going to try the NeoMarine. I've been reading up on Brightwell Aquatics and then seem like a good company with good products. I think I'll test the NeoMarine to see how differently it mixes up from the IORC before I start using it though.