All other salts are double the price of Instant Ocean. Is it really worth it?

Vyper

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For me it was never about which was better but which one left my automated mixing station clean. After a few months of IO everything was covered in brown crud and nasty. Had to keep cleaning these big tanks out and everything else that is part of the system. I have been using Tropic Marin for about 8 months and everything still looks great. No cleaning required and that to me is worth the price just to not have that headache.
 

Randy Holmes-Farley

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fter a few months of IO everything was covered in brown crud and nasty. Had to keep cleaning these big tanks out and everything else that is part of the system. I have been using Tropic Marin for about 8 months and everything still looks great. No cleaning required and that to me is worth the price just to not have that headache.

While I prefer normal IO to Reef Crystals, I'm curious why so many people fell the need to "clean" the brown residue from Reef Crystals.

What would happen if you just ignored it?
 

dieselkeeper

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I use to use Reef Crystals. I could get a 200 gallon box dropped at my door for less than $50. SPS started to look bad. Tested water almost daily. I found phosphates would go up after a water change. Tested my RO water and newly mixed saltwater. RO water tested good. I found Reef Crystals salt was the cause of the phosphates. Now using Classic Tropic Marin. Tank now looks better then ever.
 

areefer01

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What would happen if you just ignored it?

I am just one hobbyist but what happened in my case was nothing. It just built up over time with encrusting layers. Thicker I guess we would say. Water was still clear and I'd wager the chemistry composition was the same.

When I used the salt I mixed it in a 44 gallon gray brute - food prep and storage safe supposedly at least that is what it says on their portal. The build up was worse the longer I left the water in the container. If I cleaned it out and mixed fresh, used the water that day, wipe it out, there would be no build up. It was only after leaving it stored.

TL; DR - probably nothing and in my case it built up over time. Elbow grease, heavy duty bristle brush, and time cleans it up.
 
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ReeferSamster

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While I prefer normal IO to Reef Crystals, I'm curious why so many people fell the need to "clean" the brown residue from Reef Crystals.

What would happen if you just ignored it?
I have not cleaned out my salt water mixing barrel in I think 4 years. The last time was when I upgraded tanks to the Reefer350 so everything was being "renewed" or examined.

I have no schedule regimen to clean my Instant Ocean salt water mixing barrel in the future.

They are just precipitates. There are probably precipitates all over your tank in some corner, on some rock, a little on the heater, a little on the overflow. Do you clean all the precipitates squeaky clean in your tank? If not, why would anyone feel the need to clean out the precipitates in your salt mixing barrel?

I guess I'd clean precipitates out squeaky clean in my tank if I wanted to take a ToTM photo or if Walt Smith was a guest at my house for aesthetics, but no need for my salt water mixing barrel.
 
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jda

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If you develop a formula for your salt and use a little muriatic acid (or other acid) to lower your salt mix alk, precipitate is nearly never an issue... those barrells are squeaky clean. This is true with all salts. ...or you can just leave it.

I have posted this a million times before, but here is my formula. 44g brute of COLD RODI. 50g bag of IO. 2 tbsp of dowflake. Mix while cold. Heat and add 20mls of Muriatic Acid. Mix for another day or two until all of the co2 is blown off and pH is back up. About 7.0 alk, 425/430 calcium and perfect water for me. It is easy to adjust the acid and cacl for your needs. This stuff goes into my tank seamless without nary a acropora slime.
 

Dana Riddle

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Your review of Daniel's Reefi UNO's was what tipped me over the edge to get the Reefi's instead of the Radion G5's . The lights are fantastic. Thank you for your support for all us reefers. I value your analyses more than BRSs when it comes to lights,
Thank you! In general, BRS has done some good work.
Randy's the chemist guru, but I do have a formula for ASW from a 1976 "Standard Methods", it's pretty simple and I actually mixed some it in the lab. Used it in a 55-gallon with corals. Did OK. I'll get into the lab tomorrow, find it, and post the formula.
Odd. I needed two things from the lab. Found the first immediately, but the Standard Methods isn't in the lab library, nor the other in the basement of the 4 in my office. I'll keep looking. This manual was written when collection of corals in American waters was still legal. I'll post those as well.
 

Vyper

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While I prefer normal IO to Reef Crystals, I'm curious why so many people fell the need to "clean" the brown residue from Reef Crystals.

What would happen if you just ignored it?
I tried that for a while. just So much build up so quickly. Even my water lines going to the dos were getting the build up inside the lines. I can only assume it would start affecting my the water changes over time. It was hard to look at the salt water tanks looking like rust buckets as well. when I used trash cans and garden hoses it never bothered me much because they were easy to clean out.
 

Vyper

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I have not cleaned out my salt water mixing barrel in I think 4 years. The last time was when I upgraded tanks to the Reefer350 so everything was being "renewed" or examined.

I have no schedule regimen to clean my Instant Ocean salt water mixing barrel in the future.

They are just precipitates. There are probably precipitates all over your tank in some corner, on some rock, a little on the heater, a little on the overflow. Do you clean all the precipitates squeaky clean in your tank? If not, why would anyone feel the need to clean out the precipitates in your salt mixing barrel?

I guess I'd clean precipitates out squeaky clean in my tank if I wanted to take a ToTM photo or if Walt Smith was a guest at my house for aesthetics, but no need for my salt water mixing barrel.
If you do auto water changes keeping the lines clean and no gunk to plug things up is a priority for me. It’s just piece of mind when two tanks rely on the lines staying clear and flowing correctly.
 
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ReeferSamster

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If you do auto water changes keeping the lines clean and no gunk to plug things up is a priority for me. It’s just piece of mind when two tanks rely on the lines staying clear and flowing correctly.
I do have gravity fed plumbing straight from my salt mixing barrel to my sump! I've only had it for 3 years though. When have you noticed precipitation or gunk affecting your lines! Now you are giving me thoughts to proactively address the precipitation issue of IO.
 
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Vyper

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being gravity fed your lines are probably much bigger in diameter than mine. The ones on the Neptune dos are only like a 1/4 in. Wouldn’t take a lot to create issues. Not sure how it would affect the pump itself either. I know my power head in the mixing station was always nasty when using IO. I guess a guy might be able to place a filter in front of the line and change it regularly to help avoid the buildup
 

StewL6

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Amazon approx every 3 or 4 months drops the price of 50 gal box of RC to approx $7.60 a box but you are limited to a a quantity of 3. I caught the last three sales. I bought 3 my wife bought 3 my son bought 3 my neighbor bought 3 (I paid him back! He likes the tanks) I had like 12 50 gal box’s whats that $31 per 200 gals. All day
 

ReefRxSWFL

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I mentioned this in another thread, but I would like to actually create a post dedicated to this age old question of the Battle of the Salts.
This is specifically addressing the huge disparity in price compared to all other competitive brands.


Instant ocean regular purple lid (not Reef Crystals) by the 50 gallon bag equivalence to other salts shows half price or even less than half cost of competing salts. We are talking about 40-50 bucks per bucket. for 4 50 gallon bags, it comes out to $45 or so for 200 gallons. And I always hoard some extra when they do have a promotion once every few months where the price is $9.50 per bag. That makes it like $39 for 200 gallons! Put it on subscribe and save every month and you get another 5% off so I stack bags every month until Amazon restricts my purchases per month. Lol

The question is not just about saving just a few dollars. Are the other salts worth double the price of IO?

Is double the price worth for it for the extra alk, calc and mag? Increasing the levels in IO via supplementation still doesn't justify the cost disparity.

What about the BS marketing: Are "vitamins" "amino acids" . Is all that stuff shown scientifically to have efficacy in our tanks? And still the same question: "Is it worth double the cost?"

There are plenty of Tank of the Months in Reef2Reef and more on Reefcentral, through the years which I have seen use Instant Ocean. They can have successful tanks on this salt and still save money.

I think Dr. Randy Holmes Farley even uses Instant Ocean salt. (I'm not sure lately, but that's what he was using many years ago.)
Anyone care to chime in your opinions? Make me switch salt. I'm bored and you know what that means...add a gadget or change something in the tank. I'm actually considering to get a protein skimmer after all these years! I'm testing out a Tunze 9004 on my frag tank to see if I'm not missing anything. Haven't used a skimmer in 20 years.

I went to IO Purple, to Red Sea, because I liked cleaning brown gunk, then back to Purple, then to Reef Crystals, just because I got tired of adding MG to the Purple , but otherwise, regular IO is just fine. I used it successfully for more years than the others combined with plenty of success. I even played with Brightwell in one tank for about a year, and found no greater results . Just spent more money.
 

ReefRxSWFL

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BRS is using prices from 2 years ago. And they are using BRS pricing, not Amazon pricing.

They aren't using the current prices on Amazon for 50 gallon IO bags. For some reason the 160 gallon IO buckets are more expensive than the 50 gallon bags on Amazon. I think someone in amazon screwed up . Check out the Amazon link. The 50 gallon bag prices on Amazon make it half the price of other Salt when you equivalate the volume to their buckets.
Truth. I usually get the big Reef Crystals box for about $40
 

Drewe

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I've used reef crystals exclusively on two tanks for 4 years.

Amazon has a 160g 5 gallon bucket of reef crystals for 39.99 right now, that's the usual price too. I've never had it mix to 13 alk and I check It fairly regularly, it's almost always between 9-10.5 but I've had it mix to 12 at 1.026 at least once.

Would I use it if I were doing 20+% changes per week? Probably not because it's never right on the nose everytime, but I do 10-15% every other week, sometimes going longer - at that frequency small fluctuations aren't going to bother anything.

The BRS video is insane to use as a comparison because they charge $60+ shipping for a bucket and Amazon charges me $40 with free shipping, and it comes the next day on a subscription.
 

ReefRxSWFL

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Just about every salt representative I've talked over 15yrs has pretty much said

"You're not paying extra for what's in the salt but what's NOT in the salt.... contaminates"

I believe IO comes from evaporation pools, evaporated down to minerals

evaporation-ponds-for-sea-salt-production-photo.jpg


Who knows what's in that salt mix and how well they refined-out contaminates (?)

I mean Red Seas whole marketing is that they use saltwater from the Red Sea and evap out the h2o to retain all that "goodness" in each crystal :rolleyes:

Higher end salt mixes (TM) uses pharmaceutical grade calc, carbonate, mag, potassium, etc etc. So the mix is more "pure"

Purer is better??? Who knows....

I personally think routine WATERCHANGES is a LOT more important than what brand of mix you use.


.
Ive seen ICP tests from several manufacturers, and i really havnt seen contamination in the cheapest or the “pharmaceutical grade” salt.

And by the way, there is no such thing as “Pharmaceutical Grade”. Its not a thing So just sayin, everyone who makes that claim is FOS!

Ive been a pharmacist for 27 years, and used to work in regulatory compliance at a sterile injectable manufacturer. And if they mean USP ( they should say that) as an example,

USP Sodium Cloride contains up to 25 PPM phosphates, 100ppm bromides, 2ppm Aluminum, 5ppm Heavy Metals, 2ppm Iron…….

If you don’t want to take my word…… USP.org.

At least you wont need to dose trace, right?
 

GillMeister

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Was It Randy on BRS who said he'd never use IO again? I maybe wrong.
I've not used it but did see a BRS recently where this comment was made? He did not elaborate as to why.
I am limited to Aquaforest, Redsea, Quantum and TM (struggle to find it)
I don't think Randy is stupid, but I've heard him say things that were clear indicators of mental deficiency. Such as: I would never use baking soda to raise alk and I would never use vinegar to clean pumps because it's not pure enough. Both of which are terribly unpure cooking and baking products, as we know.

OK, maybe that was a little mean but I doubt he'd voice half his opinions if Ryan proofed and approved them first.
 
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