Guys
I can categorically say that our salt is a unique formulation which D-D developed to have in our opinion the ideal parameters for a reef aquarium.
You only have to test the parameters to see that it is obviously not Red Sea Coral Pro rebadged - you can answer this question then yourselves.
We heard this many times in the early days on the UK forums however tests will show that we have:
Lower Calcium at 440ppm
Higher dKH at 9.3
Higher Magnesium at 1340
Higher Potassium at 410
David Saxby
http://www.theaquariumsolution.com/d...ys-aquarium-20
spent many months adjusting parameters of salt mixes on his 3500g system adding magnesium, buffer and calcium as required in line with the Balling method.
Once we new where we wanted to go with a formulation we looked at a number of manufacturers, there are only a small number of serious manufacturing companies globally if you take out the small plants where the product is made in small batches in cement mixers.
We decided to use a natural base for the salt using evaporated water from a coral sea as this has the benefit of having all of the main and minor trace elements in the correct balance and more importantly they are homogenous throughout the mix.
As many trace elements are at levels of 1 gm per tonne - how can you expect to mix this small amount evenly through the salt in a synthetic manufacture without tub to tub variations and will these trace elements act as toxins if you get more than natural levels in your bucket or do you just not add them at all?
In the UK the salt has been accepted extremely well and gets excellent reviews from serious reef keepers and this is being repeated in all the other countries that we are now moving into. I have seen some very positive responses on this forum too.
David Saxby has now been running his aquarium exclusively on our salt for the last year and is getting the most amazing colouration and good growth. He can now keep some of the more difficult species of sponges as they are presumably responding to trace elements in the salt that were not there previously.
The only other product that David adds is iodine which he maintains at a level of 0.06ppm. The salt contains iodine at this same level but becomes depleted in the aquarium. Interestingly many salt mixes do not contain any iodine at all.
Side note: On my last aquarium I started to get severe RTN on many corals and this was stopped in its tracks by the addition of iodine as recommended to me by someone on Ultimate Reef forum. The iodine is apparently used to form an enzyme that helps to remove active oxygen from the coral flesh during the night.
David has now stopped the daily dosing of magnesium, calcium and buffer as the H2Ocean salt allows the levels to be maintained through water changes alone - about 15-20% per month.
He still runs a Deltec Calcium reactor however this now only runs at about half the output as the high magnesium makes it significantly easier to maintain the calcium level in your tank.
The only other things that he does are to control phosphate using Rowaphos, control the nitrates using a Deltec NFP vodka reactor and to feed heavily. There are 500 fish in the system and the fine particles that come off the frozen food will feed the corals too.
Hopefully this has answered your question and given you some additional info to think about too
All the best
Stuart