Brand New 8 gallon bio cube

[SashimiTurtle]

Please explain stratified salt.

So, ref salt is a bunch of different minerals. In mixing, shipping, storage, ect... different minerals weight different amounts and are different sizes.

Take a bag of dog food, crumble up half of it and then pour each back in the bag. It'll be pretty mixed up at first, but tank that bag and shake it a few times and drop it on the floor a few more. All the fine stuff will filter to the bottom and the larger pieces will settle out on top.

Salt manufactures use a type of clay dirt to try and bind the minerals and keep them from getting stratified. Mix some salt and leave it in the barrel, you'll have a brown film in the barrel. It's not slime or algae, it's clay.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

salt mix settles as it sits in the bucket and the heavier of the minerals in the mix sit a the bottom and the mix isn't mixed up good enough so the bottom of bucket or bag can get rich with those minerals and cause swings in your tank.

What he said... lol

 

[sfin52]

So that's what the brown is the in my bucket. Interesting. Thoughts on reef crystals. That's what I run in my tank.

 

[Why-Me]

Thoughts on reef crystals.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

So that's what the brown is the in my bucket. Interesting. Thoughts on reef crystals. That's what I run in my tank.

I think it's considered in the lower end of salt mixes. Your KIA or Hundai if you will... but its consistent from what I've heard.

 

[Why-Me]

I think it's considered in the lower end of salt mixes. Your KIA or Hundai if you will... but its consistent from what I've heard.

+1
Nothin wrong with IO salt

 

[Magellan]

I just learned so much. I’ve been doing something right and not even knowing it..really good to know what that brown stuff is in the bucket though! Thanks @Why-Me and @Robin Haselden !!

 

[sfin52]

I think it's considered in the lower end of salt mixes. Your KIA or Hundai if you will... but its consistent from what I've heard.

I'm ok with Kia or hundai.

 

[living_tribunal]

@living_tribunal
Red sea black bucket can sometimes mix that high. Stratified salt could mix even higher, doing a water change will only raise the tank more. Need to make fresh salt mix and test all parameters. Ca, Alk, Mg, NO3 and PO4

That’s reef crystals alk.

 

[living_tribunal]

13 is WAY too high. Get that back down to 10 or under. Probably why your duncans are ticked off.

Look up a wood air "stone". Those give you the micro bubbles.

Whoops sorry, reef crystals is 12* that was at a higher gravity. At 1.026 it’s 12.

 

[living_tribunal]

@living_tribunal
Red sea black bucket can sometimes mix that high. Stratified salt could mix even higher, doing a water change will only raise the tank more. Need to make fresh salt mix and test all parameters. Ca, Alk, Mg, NO3 and PO4

Also, the water changes don’t really irritate my corals too much. Most don’t even flinch.

 

[living_tribunal]

13 is WAY too high. Get that back down to 10 or under. Probably why your duncans are ticked off.

Look up a wood air "stone". Those give you the micro bubbles.

The source of the Duncan’s frustration was flow. I’ve had him for well over a month and he’s done nothing but grow bigger. My corals seem to love my water so far so I don’t really want to change much in that regard.

There wasn’t a single stressed coral in my tanks until I ignorantly hydrogen peroxide dipped my firework cloves and then couldn’t figure out flow after cleaning my pumps.

 

[living_tribunal]

Love crystals, I’ll take s*** from everyone for being cheap but it has the best elevated params and holds them the longest per brs. I haven’t had a coral that’s unhappy from it yet.

 

[Katrina71]

Love crystals, I’ll take s*** from everyone for being cheap but it has the best elevated params and holds them the longest per brs. I haven’t had a coral that’s unhappy from it yet.

Cheap salt/ expensive coral. It works.

 

[living_tribunal]

Cheap salt/ expensive coral. It works.

But I mean it’s also a high quality salt despite price. Reef crystals always comes out at least top 3 in the various brs salt studies. The seller for me was just reef crystals ability to hold the params for many many weeks without changing much. The only other elevated param salt that held close was Red Sea but it’s lower nutrients and the dip was smaller.

Quite literally all of my corals are growing gangbusters with it. Aside from the corals becoming stressed from flow after cleaning my pumps, I’ve never seen any issues.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

I prefer my alk around 8. When I was a noob I bought the coal pro salt. It says coral pro, it must be what the coral pros use... My corals didn't like the high alk. I didn't know what was wrong so I did a water change, alk went back up. Corals would look like crap and then slowly start looking better as alk fell, did another water change and spiked alk back up...

Ended up switching to the blue bucket, then to Brightwell. Both blue bucket and Brightwell mix at 8.0 at 1.026.

As mentioned earlier today, many ways to skin a cat. Skinning it the same way every time is the key.

 

[Why-Me]

 

[JoshH]

I prefer my alk around 8. When I was a noob I bought the coal pro salt. It says coral pro, it must be what the coral pros use... My corals didn't like the high alk. I didn't know what was wrong so I did a water change, alk went back up. Corals would look like crap and then slowly start looking better as alk fell, did another water change and spiked alk back up...

Ended up switching to the blue bucket, then to Brightwell. Both blue bucket and Brightwell mix at 8.0 at 1.026.

As mentioned earlier today, many ways to skin a cat. Skinning it the same way every time is the key.

I started with Coral pro as well, corals didn't seem to mind it but was reading a thread about the blue bucket and coral pro. Now I mix them together, puts my alk around 9 usually which I'm happy with and my corals were super happy as well

 

[living_tribunal]

I prefer my alk around 8. When I was a noob I bought the coal pro salt. It says coral pro, it must be what the coral pros use... My corals didn't like the high alk. I didn't know what was wrong so I did a water change, alk went back up. Corals would look like crap and then slowly start looking better as alk fell, did another water change and spiked alk back up...

Ended up switching to the blue bucket, then to Brightwell. Both blue bucket and Brightwell mix at 8.0 at 1.026.

As mentioned earlier today, many ways to skin a cat. Skinning it the same way every time is the key.

It might be the case cause I’ve only done 3 water changes since starting my display.

I do water changes on the frag tank more since it has a lot more coral and some large ones which pull quite a bit more per g.

I think I’ll have to start testing alk, calcium and mag soon but I don’t think I’ll have to start dosing for another 3-4 months. The one thing are the sps right now. They took a very long time to do anything but I guess are finally settled in.

This monti cap took a lot of damage during my first Dino outbreak. The lady who gave it to me literally snapped it off with her thumb. He only had 3-4 polyps when I added it to my display and had nearly bleached out.

A month and a half ago:

Today, it’s hard to tell from the picture but he has about 30 polyps. He’s only grown maybe a half inch but it’s the thickness that’s tripping me up. He’s got these like spikes and grooves coming out. He was completely flat when I added him in.

This other monti held up fine during Dino but was rather skinny.

A month ago:

Tonight, the new branches are starting to come out a little bit but also just thicker if that makes sense. I’m not really sure what sps looks like when it’s growing.

My birds nest is a little bleached, I think it’s still acclimating to the light. His polyps are always out and extended and his color is slowly coming back, I’m not too worried.

 

[Magellan]

I prefer my alk around 8. When I was a noob I bought the coal pro salt. It says coral pro, it must be what the coral pros use... My corals didn't like the high alk. I didn't know what was wrong so I did a water change, alk went back up. Corals would look like crap and then slowly start looking better as alk fell, did another water change and spiked alk back up...

Ended up switching to the blue bucket, then to Brightwell. Both blue bucket and Brightwell mix at 8.0 at 1.026.

As mentioned earlier today, many ways to skin a cat. Skinning it the same way every time is the key.

I prefer 8 as well. NSW for the win. In defense of 12 or even 13, isn’t 14 technically the upper limit?