Today on the BRStv 52 FAQ, we’re talking about the dangers of changing salt brands.
are there any ?
Hi, I’m Ryan RT Turner, one of your hosts of BRStv, with another episode of 52 FAQ,
where each week we answer your questions from our popular 52 Weeks of Reefing series.
This week we are answering Stefan O’brien’s question from wee 39, just inherited a 120gal
reef tank and i would like to perform my first water change on it.
I do not know what brand of salt was being used before.
is this an issue?
Ok so everyone has been on the hunt for the best salt out there since the first time a
reefer added a coral to a tank.
many of us have used the same salt since day one and others are constantly changing in
search of the holy grail.
Open and honest, I think this whole thing is blown a bit out of proportion.
It is important that you start with high quality source water and salt mix, but it is 100 times
more important that you maintain that water and its parameters afterwords.
So that being said, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that pretty much any salt
out there is what Id call "good enough".
You can definitely have success with all of them, the question is just can i achieve more
success meaning healthier faster growing corals with another brand.
I’d consider this very much like like pet food.
They all have different ingredients and different approaches to health, growth and quality controls.
You are never going to know for sure which one is best for your pet but we all pick one
that fits a mind set that speaks to us and our budgets.
With salt mixes the budget doesn't really come into play as much.
While they do range a bit in price the net difference for most reefers with average sized
tanks is likely only 5 dollars a month between the cheapest and the most costly mix available.
A quick look at the differences between the types of salts out there.
instant ocean and reef crystals, being one of the lowest cost options, can be found in
many of the big box pet stores and because of that probably the most widely used as well.
In many ways it's similar to the Purina or Iams of the pet world.
very popular foods which people have had decades of success with, and will continue to do so
for a long into the future.
Outside of that, we start to look at specialty salt mixes which have specific desires or
goals.
Red sea is a good example, they have a more natural approach to reefing.
the Primary component of a salt mix is sodium chloride, which they get from evaporation
ponds where water from the red sea is evaporated out preserving all kinds of natural elements
from the red sea.
This natural approach is obviously very attractive to many reefers.
The flip side of this is a more scientific approach many of the german manufacturers
take by using synthetic purified salts.
Synthetic, meaning rather than using salts from mines or evaporation ponds they create
the sodium chloride and other ingredients from raw elements which produces a almost
contaminant free salt.
Pretty much any industry where high purity is critical like pharmaceuticals is going
to use synthetic salts over mined or evaporated.
To that they add back in every important element in controlled quantities to a precise balance
of elements and an ultra pure salt mix free of impurities which are found in more natural
sources.
A few good examples of salts like this are the HW marinemix, Korallen zucht reefers best,
and tunze salts.
Not surprisingly all of these are german companies because this high purity exacting approach
absolutely matches the german mentality, especially as it relates to reefing.
Ok so if your like Stefan and want to change salts, what kind of issues are you going to
run into, and what type of considerations should you have?
Well to be frank it’s not a big deal as long as you apply the same simple universal
logic you apply to any water change.
Small 10% water changes inherently mean 90% of the water is the same and there is almost
no chance you are going to see any impact even if the salt is drastically different
than what you were using.
lets say the new salt had an impossibly low DKH of five and your tank was ten.
a 10% water change would only bring it down to around 9.5 which is going to have no noticeable
impact on a otherwise healthy tank . This is going to be true for basically every perimeter
in the tank and doing a slow change over is completely safe.
Keep in mind that all of these salts are various degrees of good to great; none of them are
likely to cause a detrimental impact to the tank regardless of how big the change is,
as long as you keep the stability fundamentals in mind.
Meaning make sure the salt mix has a similar calcium, alkalinity, temperature, and salinity
level as your tank.
it will almost certainly go smoothly even if you do larger changes.
on occasion you might hear of someone who had a detrimental impact from changing salts
and it is almost always traced back to either the tank was fairly stressed to begin with
or they did a water change with a salt that was very dissimilar to their tanks parameters.
For instance KZ reefers best typically runs around natural seawater alkalinity of 7 DKH
and it probably isn't a super wise move to instantly switch the Coral Pro salt from red
sea which runs elevated DKH of 11-12.
if you do, start with small changes until most of the water has been changed out.
There are also a few funky salts out there with strange elements mixed in like solid
carbon dosing components.
I would absolutely start slow with this as well if you find value in what they offer.
Hopefully we shed some light on why someone might switch salt mixes, and that its not
as big of a deal as you might have thought.
Just make sure that most of the parameters are fairly similar to what you are running
in your tank.
If you're looking for more info on salt and water, check out week 7, "how to produce the
best water possible."
if you have any questions or tips for either us or the BRS community, let us know in the
comments area down below.
in todays poll we are asking all of you what your favorite salt mix is, so share your opinion
and check out what others are using.
Ill see you in the next BRS 52 FAQ, where we answer Aaron lundsten’s question:"What
kind of water storage tanks are those in the back of the video?"