Best reef salt?

[Snappy]

I have a 28 gallon Nano Cube fully stocked with mixed corals and fish. Recently got a RODI setup from the holiday gathering (whoot whoot pnwmas) and finally built the cabinet to hold the RODI. 

Now that I'll be making my own RODI water at home, I'll plan to mix my own saltwater too. It's been recommended to me that in a tank my size (28g) that I can skip most testing and supplements and just do a 5 gallon a week water change. 

Could I get some feedback on a good reef salt to use? I have room for a 5 gallon bucket of salt in my RODI cabinet. I'm on a budget, but understand that good salt could potentially save money in the long run. 

[Krux]

i use red sea blue bucket, works well for me.

 

TLF makes pre-portioned packs for 5 gallon water changes, probably not as economical as a bulk option, but convenient and stays dry... no clumping.  It is called Accurasea1 but fair warning, I don't know anyone that has used it.

 

The last option would be to get a water container and just continue to get your water at your LFS, I use my RODI for top-off but still go with 10-20 gallons a week from my LFS for convenience... I just verify the salinity and drop it in... no temp adjustments are usually necessary.  It is more expensive but takes no storage, mixing pump, or heater and for me at least takes only 20 minutes round trip.

Edited February 19, 2019 by Krux

[InLikeFlynn]

Nice on moving to RODI filtering at home--so much better than lugging around 5gal buckets from the LFS.   There is probably no such thing as absolute best, but when I was attempting to rely only on water changes for my nano, I had decent results with Red Sea Coral Pro (Black bucket).  It has extra elevated Ca and Alk levels over the blue bucket, so if you are not dosing, it might keep your levels up with consumption better.   Red Sea does recommend black bucket for the "Mixed Reef" Reef Care Recipe.

That stuff is spendy though.  Right now I am using LiveAquaria Professional Reef Salt, which is rumored to be re-badged Fritz RPM, which has gotten decent reviews itself.  I could not resist the black friday deal they were offering it at, I think $33 for the Box or bucket.  At $50, its still not a bad deal.  I have not had any issues with it.

Good luck!

Edit: One difference I should note if it means anything to you is mixing time might vary a little bit.  In my experience Red Sea salts mix really fast, in fact, I believe their documentation mentions that you should just mix it, raise the the temp, then use it within a few hours.  I have noticed some buildup would precipitate out of RSCP if I left it mixing too long and leave a brown residue in my mixing bucket.  I used to use Instant Ocean and it would remain cloudy for hours and I believe they would advise to wait 24 hours after mixing for it to stabilize, though I don't think it precipitated out much if I left it in the mixing container.

Edited February 19, 2019 by InLikeFlynn
Add information.

[CrabbyCrabs]

I started with salinity. Then found a better deal on reef crystals that was actually at the correct salinity. Ran into issues with reef crystals over the long term and switched back to salinity and problems improved. If/when I get an rodi I will be buying salinity. I have always bought store supplied water and do roughly 5 gallon changes each week on 2 20 gallon tanks. I personally think the best salt is fritz or salinity but I've only read about fritz

[CrazyInside]

Tried many. Fritz RPM “Reef Pro Mix” has worked the best for me. The blue box. 

[pdxmonkeyboy]

this is how much your salt mix matter..... 0.01%

If I were you I would buy two 200 gallon boxes of instant ocean. when they arrive, open them all up and mix them togther then put in gallon zip locks or whatever.

instant ocean is great salt it can just vary a little from batch to batch in terms of cal and alk. Buying two boxes will even your results out in terms of elements. $50 per box and amazon delivers to your door...

so $100 equals 360 gallons of mix / 5 gallons a week that is over a year of salt! ok, maybe just one box. (god I wish I had a small tank, a box lasts me like a month)

you need 2 5 gallon buckets. mix the salt and drop a $10 amazon heater in it. next day use a sand vac and empty the water into a 5 gallon bucket. when your done just dump the new water in. tadah...clean sand and happy fish.

the key is just measuring exactly how much salt you need...and put a marker line on your 5 gallon for water volume reference.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

[TaylorW]

6 hours ago, pdxmonkeyboy said:

this is how much your salt mix matter..... 0.01%

If I were you I would buy two 200 gallon boxes of instant ocean. when they arrive, open them all up and mix them togther then put in gallon zip locks or whatever.

instant ocean is great salt it can just vary a little from batch to batch in terms of cal and alk. Buying two boxes will even your results out in terms of elements. $50 per box and amazon delivers to your door...

so $100 equals 360 gallons of mix / 5 gallons a week that is over a year of salt! ok, maybe just one box. (god I wish I had a small tank, a box lasts me like a month)

you need 2 5 gallon buckets. mix the salt and drop a $10 amazon heater in it. next day use a sand vac and empty the water into a 5 gallon bucket. when your done just dump the new water in. tadah...clean sand and happy fish.

the key is just measuring exactly how much salt you need...and put a marker line on your 5 gallon for water volume reference.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk
 

LOVE IT!!! 

[kjlife]

This is interesting to me i've been using instant ocean salt and i was recently thinking about switching to something more expensive to be more "professional" or whatever brs talks about how tropic marine is better but its like $90 a bucket after seeing the comment on this maybe ill just stay and put in my $50 order to amazon 

[Vance164]

13 hours ago, pdxmonkeyboy said:

this is how much your salt mix matter..... 0.01%

If I were you I would buy two 200 gallon boxes of instant ocean. when they arrive, open them all up and mix them togther then put in gallon zip locks or whatever.

instant ocean is great salt it can just vary a little from batch to batch in terms of cal and alk. Buying two boxes will even your results out in terms of elements. $50 per box and amazon delivers to your door...

so $100 equals 360 gallons of mix / 5 gallons a week that is over a year of salt! ok, maybe just one box. (god I wish I had a small tank, a box lasts me like a month)

you need 2 5 gallon buckets. mix the salt and drop a $10 amazon heater in it. next day use a sand vac and empty the water into a 5 gallon bucket. when your done just dump the new water in. tadah...clean sand and happy fish.

the key is just measuring exactly how much salt you need...and put a marker line on your 5 gallon for water volume reference.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk
 

this is exactly how I am currently doing it except I am using fritz salt and a power head while mixing. I use a food scale to weigh salt mix amount. 

[lewisriverfisherman]

I would try and find a salt that matches the parameter you want to run in your tank.  I run a 20 gal nuvo and ran into problems with parameters getting to high because my corals were not up taking the alk and cal fast enough in my tank so I had to find a salt that matches my parameters.  I run fritz rpm blue box. Good luck.

[Gumby]

On 2/18/2019 at 6:15 PM, Snappy said:

I have a 28 gallon Nano Cube fully stocked with mixed corals and fish. Recently got a RODI setup from the holiday gathering (whoot whoot pnwmas) and finally built the cabinet to hold the RODI. 

Now that I'll be making my own RODI water at home, I'll plan to mix my own saltwater too. It's been recommended to me that in a tank my size (28g) that I can skip most testing and supplements and just do a 5 gallon a week water change. 

Could I get some feedback on a good reef salt to use? I have room for a 5 gallon bucket of salt in my RODI cabinet. I'm on a budget, but understand that good salt could potentially save money in the long run. 

You could run a poll with the different salts listed. I know it has been done before but I it has been a while.

[kjlife]

47 minutes ago, Gumby said:

You could run a poll with the different salts listed. I know it has been done before but I it has been a while.

Lets see it 😁

[pdxmonkeyboy]

Jason fox and randy Holmes Farley run (well, ran in the case of Randy) instant ocean.  I was running it but I do believe they changed their formula a bit to have higher alk.  

Which if you have a mixed reef, topping off with high alk water change is fine to keep alk stale but if you have SPS or other more fragile pieces... Well, I don't think that regular scheduled alk swings are what people mean when they say stable alk. 

 

 

[albertareef]

2 hours ago, pdxmonkeyboy said:

Jason fox and randy Holmes Farley run (well, ran in the case of Randy) instant ocean.  I was running it but I do believe they changed their formula a bit to have higher alk.  

Which if you have a mixed reef, topping off with high alk water change is fine to keep alk stale but if you have SPS or other more fragile pieces... Well, I don't think that regular scheduled alk swings are what people mean when they say stable alk. 

 

 

Yeah, I think this is kind of the most critical issue as any of the salts mentioned would probably work fine but it depends on what you are trying to accomplish with your water changes.  If you are counting on the water change to "rebalance" your alk/ca, then you may opt for one of the varieties that mixes up to higher levels than your tank set point (e.g. water change mix Alk at 11, tank target 8 or9) but, as monkeyboy suggests, you want to be careful of creating significant swings - which will depend on how much water you are changing out, how frequently, and consumption rate.  Alternatively, if you plan to manage your alk/ca levels through some other mechanism (e.g. dosing, reactor) or you have really low consumption (all softies) you would probably pick a salt mix that more closely matches your tank setpoint.  Regardless, because of the potential to create swings through water changes in a smaller tank and potential uncertainty around consumption rates in a new system I would recommend actually testing the Alk fairly regularly until you have your process dialed, whatever salt you choose.

Good luck!