Salt poll

[DHyslop]

I just came across this very interesting article by Ron Shimek (love him or hate him). He did a little study with water from four salt-mixes and natural seawater. He correllates survivorship of larval urchins with the copper content of the salt-mix (consistent with survivorship from natural seawater with equivalent, dosed amounts of copper). He finds that Coralife and Instant Ocean (about 700 and 450 times the copper concentration of natural seawater, respectively), show considerably poorer survival rates than Marinemix salts.

Toxicity of some freshly mixed artificial seawater...

So my question is, what salt does everyone use? Are the Marine-mix salts less common? If I've seen them at LFS I haven't noticed them. I've always used Coralife because I get a free t-shirt with every bucket. I hope I'm not handicapping myself in terms of ceph-survivability!

Dan

 

[i got crabs]

i use Real Ocean water from the Catalina Water Company. so far ive been very happy and my tank has done very well.

 

[Jean]

Sorry, guys but I just hadta rub (ahem!) salt in the wounds!!! We get ours from the sea BUT if we have students running experiments on the effects of salinity on shore critters behaviour we use instant ocean to increase the salinity

WARNING: do not try this at home!!!!!!!!!!! We monitor the activities in this situation very very closely!

J

 

[Thales]

http://reefs.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=27020&highlight=ron+salt

Interesting read about the 'study' in question - there are some issues with it.
After the 'study' came out, many jumped on the bandwagon and their corals had adverse reactions from the split.

FWIW, I use IO and never had a problem. I think the most important thing about a saltmix is that it is consistently available in your area.

 

[cthulhu77]

hmmm...don't use any of those...tropicmarin is my fav...is that the same as marinmix??? if so, it has my vote.

 

[Thales]

Oh - I just remembered. I am a member of one of the largest Reef Clubs in California. We had a box of marine mix salts donated to one of our raffles. It got won and returned for the next raffle for 6 months. We tried to give it away for two more months. The guy who finally took it, took it for a buddy who has a restaurant with a lobster tank.
It says something very impressive to me when Bay Area reefers don't want to use a product.

 

[Thales]

Tropicmarin is different from marinemix!

 

[DHyslop]

Thanks for that discussion link, Righty.

I think that I trust Shimek's ethics in conducting the experiment, and I think the experiment itself was not unreasonable. The difficulties are in the sample size, variation and the validity of urchin larvae as a useful proxy. I'm not surprised people jumped on the bandwagon after this article, most information about aquarium things like this is purely anecdotal and a little bit of an analytic approach, valid or not, will immediately impress many. An example would be the vertebrate paleontologist giving a talk that involves any sort of the most basic math and immediately earning the admiration of his audience.

From your comment about corals having problems after the "split" and finding a salt that's consistently available, I take it that it is not advised to switch salts in an established aquarium?

Dan

 

[Thales]

Thanks for that discussion link, Righty.

I think that I trust Shimek's ethics in conducting the experiment, and I think the experiment itself was not unreasonable. The difficulties are in the sample size, variation and the validity of urchin larvae as a useful proxy.

IIRC, there also wasn't consistency in the different waters for each salt used.

I'm not surprised people jumped on the bandwagon after this article, most information about aquarium things like this is purely anecdotal and a little bit of an analytic approach, valid or not, will immediately impress many. An example would be the vertebrate paleontologist giving a talk that involves any sort of the most basic math and immediately earning the admiration of his audience.

From your comment about corals having problems after the "split" and finding a salt that's consistently available, I take it that it is not advised to switch salts in an established aquarium?

Dan

Kinda. If you are going to switch salts, I would do it a little at a time. Either by small water changes with the new salt, or by mixing salts together over time.