No, I'm saying salt is salt. I add 50 cents of Ca to make a $40 bucket the same as a $140 box and my alk is 9 instead of 8. If I were to really care about alk, another few cents of HCL would take care of that too. But I'm not worried about alk, so save 100 bucks every 6 weeks. Although now that you mention it, saving $866/yr really makes them very different.

That's my approach too. Everytime I tried a more expensive salt of any kind I found that I still needed to test params and occasionally adjust. If I end up doing that anyhow then I might as well go with the least cost option. The amount of Ca and Alk or even Mg I'd dose to get to targets is WAY less than the upcost of a different salt.

I dunno maybe that's just weird but I never noticed a difference in the tank using a more expensive salt. (Except when I got complacent and stopped testing incoming salt and got burned by a bad batch. And there just isn't a single salt brand that is immune to that!!)

I used to be in the same boat as you guys. There are lots of old posts with me saying IO + a couple supplements = WIN. Then I tried H2Ocean and never looked back (my SPS improved). Now, H2Ocean has much higher alkalinity than it used to, so I'm adding muriatic acid to it and everything else tests out fine. If you're not running SPS-dominant, I don't think there is much difference between one salt and another.

Except I run SPS dominant and still feel like salt is salt. I used RBS for 2 years in the 180, then IO for the next 2. No difference. Perhaps something else changed for you at the time you changed salt?

Regardless, the only salt I can buy is IO, so that's what I use.

I switched back and forth a few times to convince myself it was the salt because I didn't believe it.

Well, now you can buy Aquaforest on Amazon! *mind blown* :lol:

Still more than I spend on IO, which I'm happy with. Can't justify more money for no gain.

How do you know that? This stuff could be the next reefing miracle! :razz:

I've been doing this long enough to know that there are no miracles. Just stability. :)

There are miracles everywhere...take Radiums for example. ;)

Just lights. I prefer them, many don't. Look at you, you chose an inferior light and you're happy :)