Using up excess salt

[Fishko]

I made the mistake when i first started out to buy coral pro. I made the switch to tropic marin pro. Ive currently been mixing the two salts 3:2 tropic marin to coral pro. My alk stays around 8.0. I still have half a 5g bucket of the coral pro salt left and my tropic marin is running low. Could i just use the coral pro as it is without risking an alk swing. I do a 5g wc weekly. Water volume is around ~37g

 

[burningstarIV]

What's the alk of the Coral Pro when mixed to your tank salinity? Likely, you can go with 10-15% water changes (as you are) with 100% either salt and the alk will slowly adjust to the new salt. Tropic Marin is usually a little lower alk than 8 from what I've experienced, so I'm thinking Coral Pro is a bit higher (never used it). For the most stability I would recommend just using the one you want to stick with permanently and maybe sell the other locally. I know that's not always feasible so i guess I'm just trying to say that small water changes with one salt or the other won't drastically change the alk UNLESS the Coral Pro is super high alk, then just slowly change your ratio until you're at 100% Coral Pro.

 

[Fishko]

What's the alk of the Coral Pro when mixed to your tank salinity? Likely, you can go with 10-15% water changes (as you are) with 100% either salt and the alk will slowly adjust to the new salt. Tropic Marin is usually a little lower alk than 8 from what I've experienced, so I'm thinking Coral Pro is a bit higher (never used it). For the most stability I would recommend just using the one you want to stick with permanently and maybe sell the other locally. I know that's not always feasible so i guess I'm just trying to say that small water changes with one salt or the other won't drastically change the alk UNLESS the Coral Pro is super high alk, then just slowly change your ratio until you're at 100% Coral Pro.

Coral pro has an alk of 11 tropic marin has 7.4 ish. Ive been mixing the two salts together, once i used them all up i was planning on just using red sea blue bucket

 

[burningstarIV]

So... here's how I would do it:

If you're at 3:2 Tropic Marin to Coral Pro now and have enough, something like 3:3 this week's wc, 2:3 next week's and then 1:3 the week after. Something like that so you can time running out of Tropic Marin without a big change. This will slowly ramp up your alk until you're 100% Coral Pro and then over the next few months your alk will eventually be 11 in the tank. You'll want to do similar when changing to Blue Bucket. I'm coming from SPS world where changes, especially in alk need to go slow. You can speed this up in a softie tank and some LPS, but stability and slow changes are always best for every tank unless it's an emergency.

That's just my opinion/how I'd do it for stability.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

The alk will rise slowly if you switch over to coral pro. The rate of alk rise During a single change is easily reduced by doing smaller Changes more often, but alk will slowly rise.