H20 ocean salt is just rebadged Red Sea salt

[Red Coral Aquariums]

I have emailed D-D about Fauna Marin's accusation:
"Please don´t use H2O this salt is relabeled Red Sea Coral Pro and we have some really problems with the coral coloration."
It will be interesting to put this to rest. I will share my reply upon receipt.
Kevin

[GreenSpottedPuffer]

Originally Posted by Red Coral Aquariums

I have emailed D-D about Fauna Marin's accusation:
"Please don´t use H2O this salt is relabeled Red Sea Coral Pro and we have some really problems with the coral coloration."
It will be interesting to put this to rest. I will share my reply upon receipt.
Kevin

Great!

I look forward to hearing back about this.

[Stuart Bertram D-D]

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

[fishytime]

Stuart, thank you for taking the time to respond. Welcome to our little board.

[Whatigot]

I remember when I used to be a vodka reactor...
I was going to take my tub back to OA and get some seachem..
But I love to see this kind of customer support so I will stick with the h2o and give it a shot...
Plus that article from aquarium water testers takes a little luster off of the seachem reef....

I'm with gsp on staying with tropic marin pro if anybody was going to keep carrying it.

[Zylumn]

Originally Posted by bigblack

And No just cuz i heard it on the net doesnt make it true but i was just going on fauna marin's reputation when i read that,

Quote from http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/sho...=fencer&page=6
"Please don´t use H2O this salt is relabeled Red Sea Coral Pro and we have some really problems with the coral coloration.
Take TUNZE Salt or SeaChem or Instant Ocean"

Has anyone ever talked to a store owner etc. with a good "reputation" that would recommend instant ocean for a reef setup unless they have a wide variety of additives they want to sell??

[Stuart Bertram D-D]

Originally Posted by Whatigot

I was going to take my tub back to OA and get some seachem..
But I love to see this kind of customer support so I will stick with the h2o and give it a shot...

I am glad that my response did some good however I would rather you stick with our salt on the quality of its formulation and consistency than our customer support as this is the real test of a good product range.

To add to what I said earlier I saw that a couple of people had readings that were outside the range that we publish and this concerns me about the method of testing.

We are extremely confident about the levels that we achieve - so much so that we print both a standard and a range on each bucket - how many companies give you that much information in the salt market?. There are retained samples of each 1 tonne batch (batch number on the instructions) and in the past we have had queries about measured levels and gone back to the samples and fond the salt to be correct.

From this I have produced a series of FAQ's on our website to allow people to fully understand our experience with testing and how people use the testing equipment.

http://www.theaquariumsolution.com/node/576

http://www.theaquariumsolution.com/node/494

An extraction from the above is as follows

Whilst we are checking the parameters again I would like you to recheck your own tests and hopefully learn a few things from the further information below.

SALINITY

The levels on the salt are given at a salinity of 1.025 at 25C or 35.5ppt

To measure this salinity with a refractometer you must aim for a reading of 1.0262 as a refractometer will always measure as if the water is at 20C. (most refractometers have on the viewer 20/20)

If you read our salt instructions you will see how to calibrate the refractometer properly which say that the instrument must be at 20C during calibration and not the water.

When you then take a reading the REFRACTOMETER will always measure the SG as if the water is at 20C as the small amount of water that you add to the slide will have no impact on the temperature of the equipment and will soon change to the same temperature as the refractometer.

What ATC ( auto temperature compensation) means is that once calibrated at 20C you can use the refractometer in higher ambient temperatures where the instrument is hotter or colder.

If you use a HYDROMETER which is calibrated at 25 then you must have the water at 25C to get a reading of 1.025 at 25C, (check the calibration temperature printed on the hydrometer). If the water is colder than 25C then you can use the chart on the salt instructions to work out what the salinity must be at that lower temperature so that when you warm it to 25 it drops to 1.025.

Complicated stuff but simple when you understand it.

Whilst writing this reply I have realised that the temperature chart has a mistake on it. It should say on the right hand column "hydrometer calibrated at 25C" and not "SG calibrated at 20C". I changed this as the most common measuring tool was a refractometer however as I have already explained - a refractometer will always read as if the water is 20C and so you always must aim for 1.0262 if you want 1.025 at 25C.

TESTING

What we also found during development was how difficult it was to get accurate testing and we tried a lot of hobby kits against water samples measured in the laboratory. We even sent the same water off to a number of laboratories as 2 separate blind samples and got different results on some parameters, (not on magnesium), on the same water, so if laboratories find it hard to measure then what chance have we with hobby test kits.

What we did conclude is that the Tropic Marine Calcium/Magnesium Test Kit was the most reliable and accurate of the kits that we tried and agreed with the laboratory for magnesium every time. This is not the easiest kit to use and obtains a magnesium reading having first measured the calcium level. You therefore get 2 results with one test kit.

Other test kits we found could often be variable and sometimes out by up to 10% either way, although we did not test all manufacturers' kits.

If you follow the above many people will find that their salinity or SG is not as high as they think it is which is why the readings are often lower than we publish.

Hope this also helps a few people

Cheers

Stuart

[GreenSpottedPuffer]

Thanks Stuart!

I was going to stick with H2O (as I mentioned earlier) because I have had nothing but great results with it and it tests within range each time I test but this just reassures me even more I guess.

Nice to have you come here and explain things. And put this whole thing to rest.

I think your explanation was pretty much exactly what a few of us thought...salt is only manufactured in a few places around the world so many different mixes are made at the same place but that doesn't make them the same product...

[JDigital]

My choices are limited right now... I just ran out of Aquamedic Reef salt, which i REALLY liked, mixed extremely clean and quick... but the LFS can't get any in for a year... so I am stuck between choosing Instant Ocean, H20 or RBS...

Thinking about going with this H20... but for $5 more i can get the RBS.. something I know isn't a rebrand.


EDIT: Maybe I should have read all the new posts before posting... LOL Thanks Stuart, for posting.

[BC Mosaic]

Originally Posted by Stuart Bertram D-D

Guy
.......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.............
Stuart

Hello Stuart,

Please correct me if I'm wrong but isn't evaporated water the same as distilled water which is basically just pure H2O. Can trace elements be suspended/supported by water vapour? I use RO/DI for water changes and distilled water for drinking and cooking (doctors freak over this) and both read 000 TDS.

Thanks