Red Sea Pro salt vs blue bucket salt review

[nalusachito]

I’ve been using red sea salts from day 1 for my red sea max nano tank. I finished off a 22kg bucket of the coral pro salt and then switched to blue bucket salt and I’ve been using it for more than 1 year now.

I started my tank as a LPS reef tank 2 years ago, I was very happy to use the pro salt. As a beginner, I didn’t use a dosing pump. Thanks to pro salt’s elevated level of foundation elements and high alkalinity, with 10% water change every week, I was able to keep up the parameters and my LPS love it. I can easily manage my tank without a dosing pump back then.





After the first year, my tank was mature and I decided to put some SPS. With the increasing numbers of SPS, I found out that I can’t keep up the parameters just changing water every week. I started to use a dosing pump and I decided to drop my alkalinity level from 12 to 8 for the mix reef system. That’s when I switched from red sea pro purple bucket to red sea salt blue bucket. I have to say that I am impressed by the quality control of Red Sea. My test result always matches https://www.redseafish.com/my-batch/ results. The salt is easy to dissolve and mix. My sps are showing great growth. I am very happy with the salts.

 

[Jman76]

I did the same for the exact same reason...happy with the results for the last year+. Nice reef!

 

[RedReefer]

I'm switching from regular IO to Red Sea blue bucket. I'm constantly having 11-12 alk with regular IO. Red Sea blue bucket should mix around 8 alk. I hope my results go as planned.

 

[aurora.k]

Hi there @nalusachito and @Jman76

I want to also switch to the blue bucket (for the same reason, struggling to maintain the high alk) but wondering what method you used to switch? Did you slowly swap out a % of the salt and increase over time, e.g., go with 80% black bucket for the first water change and then only 60% for the next, then 40% and so on? That’s what I’m thinking to do. I do continuous water changes so this would be by the ~50 gallons per % ratio and would change 10% of the water per week on my 240 g, so basically would take about two weeks to get through the 80% mix, and 2,5 months to fully transition to the blue bucket.

thanks for any advice!

 

[aurora.k]

This one suggests just doing the 10% change with the new salt would be fine, so maybe I’m overthinking https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/switching-salts.793487/

 

[Jman76]

Hello! I did the 10% water changes. Its gradual enough i think. I havent looked back either, pretty happy with the blue.

 

[sirreef]

I switched from black bucket to blue bucket felt like elements are too high on the black bucket i would do 10-15%water changes and my magnesium would never drop but always rise I switched to the blue bucket bc it’s almost close to natural ocean water and elements are perfect for sps and lps like open brain coral, hammers etc my mag should drop wit lower mag on salt mix right