Reefers Best Salt

[Trigs]

i personally like red sea coal pro it has treated me well

[michika]

I went from Red Sea Pro to Ocean Pure Pro. I am debating the switch to RBS when I finish my bucket. I would love to see what kind of changes you see with it.

[digital-audiophile]

The zeoheads seem to love it, and I'm just not happy with ocean pure pro (the only reason I switched from IO was that when I ran out Golds only had the OPP instock)

I'm just blown away by the $99 price tag for RBS though... I guess only doing ~5Gallon water changes every week now with zeo it should last 6 months so maybe it's not so bad after all?

[michika]

I hear the same. I used to pay $79-85 for a pail of Red Sea Coral Pro in Edmonton, so I don't see it as quite the big jump as you do.

[digital-audiophile]

Under 7DKH? hmm I'll have to do a little more reserch on that. My tank water tested at 5DKH last night (using two different brand test kits) and I started to panic a bit.

When you mix up your first batch I would be interested to see how your tests come out.

[Delphinus]

Originally Posted by digital-audiophile

Under 7DKH? hmm I'll have to do a little more reserch on that. My tank water tested at 5DKH last night (using two different brand test kits) and I started to panic a bit.

5dKH might be a little low. Guide says to have it 6.5-7.5 and that any higher "shows no advantage" (which I take to mean, "not detrimental"). Coming from a few years ago when the recommendation for alk was to be 1/10th the Ca in meq/l (ie., 400Ca, 4.0meq/l -> ~11-12dKH), it's hard for me to wrap my head around low Alk numbers.

Nevertheless my alk tests at 8dKH, and unless someone comes out and tells me that it's bad, I'm leaving it there. It's such a pain to dial in different target numbers from my calcium reactor and kalk reactor that I would prefer to leave things the way they are. Plus, rapid changes in Alk I have found to be bad (worse than say low Alk, or high Alk, all on its own .. it's like the change or swing from one value to another is worse than whatever the old value was). So adjust your Alk slowly would be my recommendation.

[digital-audiophile]

Any advice on how to raise my alk level.. without resorting to even more equipment in my fish room

[Delphinus]

Seachem Reef Advantage or other alkalinity type buffer. Do you run a reactor right now at all? Ie., kalk or Calcium reactor.. if so, just throttle up slightly.

[Delphinus]

The zeo guide does suggest if you use RBS that your weekly changes can slide to every 2 weeks ... so it might not be too bad.