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- Today on BRS TV Reef FAQs, we answer,
is adjusting the major parameters of your salt mix
prior to use really worth the time?
(upbeat music)
Hi, I'm Ryan your host of BRS TV Reef FAQs,
which is about quick straight to the point answers
to those questions reefers ask all the time.
Today we answer a pretty common question.
Do I really need to adjust the levels of my salt mix
prior to use?
Does adjusting the levels mess with the overall chemistry?
And for those of you that find value in it,
what's the best or easiest way to do it?
Okay, so many of you have never even considered
adjusting the levels of your salt mix,
so what am I even talking about?
Well, if you maintain say 450 calcium in your tank,
but your salt mix is 410,
that effectively means when doing a water change
you're actually going to reduce calcium levels.
Same thing for alkalinity and magnesium.
Okay so that sounds bad but does it really matter?
And that really depends on three basic things.
How far apart the water changes are,
how much water you change out,
and the types of corals that you maintain.
Starting with the type of tank you maintain
and corals you have.
For example, if you maintain a tank of Softies,
Zoanthids, Mushrooms, and LPS like Frogspawn
or Torches or A-cans, they're just not as finicky
when it comes to subtle changes,
so while I wouldn't be reckless, all that's really
needed here is selecting a salt mix that is somewhat
close to your tank to begin with.
If you're running an SPS tank, which are much more
sensitive to subtle changes, they appreciate stability,
and will show that directly in coloration and growth,
it's wise to make as many attempts at stability
as possible.
This goes double if you're not getting the coloration
or growth that you're looking for.
The second piece of this is how far your salt mix is
from your tank levels.
If your salt mix has an alkalinity of seven point five,
and you wanna keep the tank at eight,
there isn't gonna be a ton of value fixing that
for a 20% water change, because it's gonna have
a zero point one affect on alkalinity,
and not even in the range that our test kits
are accurate to.
However if the salt mix had a magnesium of 1280,
and I was looking for 1440, I would probably wanna fix that.
In general, let's say a good rule of thumb is
if it's more than 10% off, I might consider it,
at 20%, I'd probably do it for sure.
But something I'll get to in a moment
is I'm probably more likely to switch salts
to something closer to my desire to begin with
if I'm off by as much as 20% percent.
10 and 20% might not sound like much,
but to give you a reference point,
based off the WWC levels, eight point six,
calcium of 480, and magnesium of 1440.
10% of that would be seven point seven dKH, 432 and 1296.
All safe numbers for any salt mix, but significantly
different than their goal for the tank.
However, at 20% off, those numbers would be
six point eight eight, 384 and 1152 respectively,
and in that case, should absolutely be fixed
prior to using it for a water change.
Okay, so the second part of this is how often
do you do a water change, and how big are they?
If you do pretty limited water changes,
like only 10% once a month, you don't really need
to worry about any of this, because being off 10%
and then only doing a 10% water change means
it's like a one percent impact to the tank.
However, if your levels are 20% off
with a 30% change a month, or weekly 10% changes,
you'll have a measurable difference,
and probably worth the effort to fix the salt mix
prior to use.
Okay, before moving forward with making the adjustments
to the salt mix, another related question
that we get a lot is, are you messing with the overall
chemistry when you adjust the mix,
and the answer is, kind of.
A subtle change of a dKH2 or 20 to 40 points of calcium
probably won't make a big change,
because the salinity of the salt probably won't
change much after those additions.
But if you make a 200 point change in magnesium,
it's gonna be a lot of magnesium, salt's added to the tank,
it may change the overall salinity.
Once you dilute it back down to 35 parts per thousand
with freshwater, the chemistry of the entire mix
is going to change.
So with best practices in mind, I would not make any changes
to the salt mix that actually result in a change
to overall salinity.
This is most likely to happen with low magnesium.
If you need to adjust it so much
that it affects the salinity and overall chemistry,
I would just select a salt which has levels closer
to your goal levels.
In fact, I think the underlying story here
is that's true in almost every case.
There are so many brands of salt out there
that have proven themselves to produce a epic reef tank.
It doesn't make a lot of sense to select one
that's intentionally way off your desired
calcium, alkalinity, and magnesium levels.
Cost probably isn't one of them for the average tank,
either, for most reefers, the cheapest
to the most costly out there is only a difference
of four bucks or so, and almost certainly evens out
after the cost of testing and adjusting the salt
after the fact, and that buck or two
just isn't worth the time invested.
The only exception to that is your desired salt
does something uniquely well
that makes the effort worth it.
Maybe it contains some nutrients like amino acids,
comes in convenient, single-use pouches,
mixes a ton faster than others,
visibly cleaner, or has some kind of definable
purity standard like pharma, or maybe it just keeps
the mixing bin cleaner and requires less overall work.
If any of those things are what you're after,
and you've found a salt that does it uniquely well for you,
it might be worth tweaking to your uses,
and in the end, this is how you do that.
You can use most alkalinity, calcium,
and magnesium additives, but a vast majority of Reefers
use sodium bicarbonate for alkalinity,
calcium chloride for calcium,
and a general adjustment magnesium mix,
because these options have the smallest impact
on the overall chemistry,
and at the same time, the cheapest.
If you don't already have all these on hand,
I would suggest just getting the single use pouch
which will allow for making a gallon of each solution.
It's affordable, easy to mix, with no measuring.
Once you have them all mixed, head on over to our site,
bulkreefsupply.com and hit the calculator button up top.
We'll select alkalinity first,
then in this case, liquid sodium bicarbonate
in the new pharma pouch.
If you're using something else, select that.
Then the size of your saltwater mixing bin
when it's filled or an estimate of where you filled it to,
I'll choose 30 gallons, which is a pretty common
Brute trashcan size, and then the current alkalinity
of the salt mix, which we'll say is seven,
make sure to select your desired measurement type,
in our case, dKH, and then the goal alkalinity of,
in this case, I'll just say nine.
Hit calculate and it'll say we need 85 (mumbles)
of sodium bicarbonate solution, mix it up in the salt mix,
and we're done.
The alkalinity of the freshly mixed salt
will now be nine, and we can move on.
I'm gonna spare you the walkthrough of the calcium
and magnesium, because the process is the exact same.
Just make sure to select the liquid calcium
or liquid magnesium mix,
or whatever you're using.
Hopefully this helped everyone understand why
anyone would want to adjust their salt mix prior to use,
or even better, how to avoid doing it in the first place.
Wanna learn more about salt?
Check out this video up top here where Randy tested
exactly how long it takes for salt to fully dissolve,
or this one on avoiding precipitate and crud
in your salt water mixing bin.
Even better, this tiny little box here which has
every video we've ever done on salt,
proper mixing, selecting the right one for your needs,
and even storage.
See you next week for the next episode of BRS TV.