Hi everyone,
As some of you may already have heard, we have been working on our own bulk 2-part additives. After 1 year of searching and testing and searching and testing and searching and testing and……we have finally found what we feel is the purest ALK in the industry.
Calcium
This one was easy. As we know, some of you have successfully used "driveway heat" snow melter to dose CA in your reef tanks. So it's safe to say that our 98% pure pharm grade Calcium Chloride is up to the task. We have purchased it from an aquarium supplier that most of us already use products from. This stuff has been on the market for years, we simply buy it in bulk.
Soda Ash / Alkalinity
This one was a PIA to say the least. You would not believe how many different grades of soda ash there are out there. Most are ok to use……well, ok if you don't mind the occasional cyano outbreak. While others are just plain scary heh!
How did we test? We field tested and lab tested.
After 4 or 5 failed field testes we decided to have them lab tested. The failed field tests did not harm any coral (keep in mind that they were short term test) but caused cyano outbreaks. Some were controllable while others were down right disastrous.
So rather than wasting time testing we opted to get them lab tested. There is a local reefer on one of the french boards in town that has lab tested a bunch of additives, salt mixes, test kits…etc. We noticed that he was testing ALK mixes from the usual suspects so we figured we would have ours tested as well.
We sent him the best soda ash we had and it came back negative. It ranked among the worst, it didn't even rank in the top 5. BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD :-(
So back to searching and testing and searching and testing and searching and testing and….. :-)
Here we are one year later and we have found what we feel is the best most pure soda ash in our hobby. The tests came back shockingly positive. We have the chart and we will be posting the results.
Our competitors Soda Ash / ALK additives are also on this chart. Please keep in mind that these are not our tests but the test of a hoobiest. We frankly do not care how pure their alk is, all we wanted to know is now pure ours is. Even though this cart is readily available we will still blackout their names as we do not want to crap on our competitors. We also do not want to give anyone the wrong impression, just because the reading of a certain element is high, it does not mean it will kill your corals. Many people have been using these products successfully for years.
I will post the chart once we black out the names :-)
To make a long story short. Our CA and ALK is on line and available is to sizes. Please view the links below
http://www.reefsupplies.ca/online-st...5-gallons.html
http://www.reefsupplies.ca/online-st...-1-gallon.html
http://www.reefsupplies.ca/online-st...-5-gallon.html
http://www.reefsupplies.ca/online-st...-1-gallon.html
Here is a link to all our bulk supplies:
http://www.reefsupplies.ca/online-store/bulk-reef/
Thanks for taking the time to read my long ASH thread! Contact us if you have any questions.
Happy reefing!