New To Reefing

JonoD

Member
Mar 3, 2015
49
8
New Tank What Salt To Use
g'day
I set my first salt water tank up last November its an aquareef 275, I have been using the aquaone reef salt that come with the tank but am about to run out,
ive been looking at the red sea sea salt and the red sea coral salt pro. just wanted to know if anyone knows what the difference between the 2 are and which one would be best to use.
the tank has live rock and substrate in it but no fish or coral in it yet but would like to start adding some very soon.

cheers
 

Buddy

Member
Mar 13, 2012
3,142
1,526
The pro has elevated parameters, so you will be better off with the normal red sea salt. It will save a few bucks too!
 

JonoD

Member
Mar 3, 2015
49
8
cool, thanks for that.
will i need to get the pro when i start to put some corals and inverts in, and will i need to dose with the normal sea salt or will that depend on what i put in my aquarium later on.
 

Buddy

Member
Mar 13, 2012
3,142
1,526
For a mixed reef the normal salt will be fine. I think the pro salt is used for people who have tanks that use the elements in the salt quickly.
 
E

ezza

Guest
I have used a lot of different salts; Red Sea, tropic marin, instant ocean, and the Australian made Great Barrier Reef one. Many are very similar and you probably can't go very far wrong with them. Red Sea coral pro is nice, very much recommend it.

Last year I started using salt bought from @holly through her business @Morphology just to give it a go and support a forum member's business. She is selling buckets of Blue Treasure sea salt. I haven't experienced any negative effects in my tank and I don't think I Have missed out on any growth from using it. My corals and fish are happy and very healthy. My coral made it through the summer and has derived essential nutrients from the salt which has meant that I have had to separate my Duncan into three, and it's likely I'll need to separate it into another two pieces because it's growing like crazy. Price wise, it's not overly expensive. The shipping charge is the one thing that you have to factor in to the purchase cost as it's being delivered to you in this case. I have a dodgy back and that is a major positive for me because I was really finding it very hard to manage bringing a 20L container home from the shop when I couldn't lift a roast chicken.

I would certainly recommend the Red Sea salt, and I would absolutely recommend the Blue Treasure. Whether or not any are better than another, I honestly don't see any appreciable difference. I would strongly recommend avoiding tropic marin at all costs. It is way overpriced and led to a tank crash because it's formulated to be used in absolute expert conditions in conjunction with vodka dosing or biopellets etc... I didn't know enough at the time and it is absolutely one of the things that caused me early reef grief.
 

JonoD

Member
Mar 3, 2015
49
8
Cool thank you
And I have ordered some of the red sea salt, hopefully it gives me a higher ALK because it's pretty low at the moment but everything else seems to be ok