Today on BRStv we are going to show you how to identify the quality of your calcium and
magnesium supplements.
Hi I'm Ryan today's host of BRStv where each week we cover a new topic related to reefing
this week we are going to show you a couple quick tests anyone can to identify the quality
of their common calcium and magnesium chloride supplements.
We will also show how a couple common brands perform in comparison to the BRS calcium and
magnesium additives which are produced with pharmaceutical grade material.
These minerals can be produced from a wide variety of sources including mined, evaporated
seawater and synthetically processed.
Mined and evaporated sources are probably the most common in our industry because of
the lower cost associated with them and most retail products need to make it through three
or four levels of distribution before they can be sold to the consumer which makes using
a higher quality material impossible.
However mined and evaporated salts almost ways contain a wide variety of contaminants
and organics from the ground, water and even air where the material is processed.
More often than not this type of material will be designated as technical grade and
commonly used for industrial applications like ice melter or dust control.
The synthetically processed material is more common in pharmaceuticals and other industries
where ultra-pure material is a requirement.
High quality salts suitable for these industries typically has extremely low impurities, organics
and insolubles.
Typically this type of product will be graded pharmaceutical grade material.
So how do you know which grade your favorite brand is using?
Honestly, its super simple, the pharmaceutical grade material costs a lot more so they are
absolutely going to advertise the grade of material used to produce their product on
the container, if they don't it's almost certainly tech grade or something similar.
Beyond that you can actually tell just by mixing some up with RO/DI water.
It is difficult and prohibitively expensive to test for impurities at home but one thing
you can be sure of is if they haven't taken the time to process the insolubles out which
are the easiest to remove there is virtually no chance that they are putting much effort
into refining the product.
Checking for insolubles is as easy as mixing some with RO/DI water.
We have these nice settling cones which make it super easy to see.
We put together a quick time lapse which shows the insolubles produced from mixing two cups
of calcium chloride with RO/DI to create a liter of solution.
You can see these two brands marketed to the aquarium industry have a pretty significant
amount of insolubles and our BRS calcium chloride using pharmaceutical grade material quickly
and crystal clear with absolutely no insolubles.
I think it is pretty clear which one most people would want to use, especially if it's
less expensive as well.
Since most of you don't own settling cones at home this is absolutely something you can
do at home with any similarly shaped container.
I got a pair of martini glasses here which work well.
Same process.
Half a cup calcium chloride, some RO/DI water, shaken of course.
You can see the difference between the BRS product and this competitors product almost
instantly in a few hours you will begin to see all the insolubles as well.
Magnesium is even easier to see.
Most of the mined or evaporated magnesium chloride has had variety of impurities.
One of which is calcium which isn't an issue in itself but indicative of the over quality
for sure.
This is most easily seen when you mix lower quality magnesium chloride and magnesium sulfate,
it will instantly cloud with milky precipitate.
Pharmaceutical grade magnesium chloride is extremely pure and won't have any of these
issues.
When we mix the BRS mag chloride with magnesium sulfate it again mixes crystal clear with
absolutely no insolubles.
Again, it's pretty obvious which of these I would want to use in my own reef tank.
So that's really all there is to it.
Most reefers really want to use the highest quality product available because we got a
lot of time and money invested in our reefs.
Luckily there are some options out there like our BRS additives which not only meet these
strict standards but the direct to consumer model also offer them at amongst the lowest
price as well.
If you have any questions or advice for your fellow reefers checkout the comments area
down below.
if this is your first time with us hit that subscribe button because we do this every
week, see ya next week with another episode of BRStv.