salt and water changes

[zeroeffect]

From looking around the forums I see that most people are making about 10-15% water changes in there tanks ones a week or every other week.

But I was wanting to know how much salt you guy's are using in a water change.

So my question is:

How much salt are you guys using in a water change?

how long goes salt last you?

what type of salt are you using?

and have any of you found some salt's to be better than others and why?

[iap]

depends on how many gallons of water you are changing.

depends on how much salt you need for the water you want to make into saltwater

instant ocean

[Sisterlimonpot]

Originally Posted by zeroeffect

From looking around the forums I see that most people are making about 10-15% water changes in there tanks ones a week or every other week.

But I was wanting to know how much salt you guy's are using in a water change.

So my question is:

How much salt are you guys using in a water change?
That all depends on what your salinity needs to be at. Most of us keep it at 1.026. You'll need to get a refractometer to test this.

how long goes salt last you?
That all depends on how often you change your water and how much you change. The easy answer is go off the bucket. It will give you roughly how many gallons it will produce.

what type of salt are you using?
I personally use reef crystal just because it was the cheapest at the time.

and have any of you found some salt's to be better than others and why?
this is going to be a highly debatable subject, it all depends on what type of tank you have. If you have a reef tank you might want a salt blend that is high in alkalinity, calcium and magnesium, but if you have a fish only tank those elements don't really matter.

[zeroeffect]

My tank is 125gal getting all the equipment in now.

We are planning on have coral of all kinds and fish.

For the most part I was just trying to get an idea of what everyone else is doing in there tanks.

also if people have used other types of salts and what did they like and not like and them.

[cpittmx]

I also use reef crystals because it is available everywhere and I don't want to have to change because I can't find what I normally use. I figure the less variables the better.

[Sisterlimonpot]

Originally Posted by zeroeffect

My tank is 125gal getting all the equipment in now.

We are planning on have coral of all kinds and fish.

For the most part I was just trying to get an idea of what everyone else is doing in there tanks.

also if people have used other types of salts and what did they like and not like and them.

Instead of going off what we "do" it's better to understand why we "do"

There's not a bad brand of salt out there (that statement pertains to the most common used ones) they all just have different levels of "trace elements" and the ones that reefers use, usually have a high concentration of alk, calc, and mag (Among other things). Everyone is going to have their favorite brand of salt, more times then not the reason is: it's the brand that we first started with and have had consistent results with.

Once you get a reef tank going and it is settled into it's groove (meaning that you have all the parameters dialed in) you don't want to disrupt the chemistry by changing the salt brand and thus throwing all those trace elements out of whack. So you stick with what you know. Just keep in mind that if you decide to change salt brands down the road (either for the price convenience or the one you're using isn't meeting your needs) your going to have to change up your daily dosing regiment.

HTH