Coralife Vs Instant Ocean Sea Salt

[Krenshaw22]

Which of these sea salt products to you go with and why.

[tkeracer619]

IO because its cheaper and IMO almost all salts are the same. some varying numbers but I don't care because I adjust them anyways to match my tank.

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Here's my standard commentary on salts. Some of it may be a bit dated as I've not kept up on every formulation change to every brand:


I do not think there is a "best" salt mix. Nearly all of them will work fine as long as you know their pros and cons.

I don't want excessive borate, which leaves out Seachem.

I don't want vitamins or anything else organic in my mix (because I doubt their utility, they degrade with time to who knows what, bacteria may thrive on them as I store new salt water for a substantial period, they are totally undescribed with respect to amounts or identity, they are often not naturally present in natural seawater at appreciable levels, and because I've occasionally had them mess with my skimmer), so that tosses out some like Reef Crystals, hW Marinemix Plus BioElements, Kent, Coralife, and Nutri-SeaWater.

I don't want excessive calcium (long term use of limewater as I use drives up calcium, so I do not want it starting high), so that tosses out a bunch, such as Kent, Seachem, Coralife and Oceanic.

There are certain companies that I will not support due to their misleading claims and/or product lines. That tosses out a few which I won't detail here since it is my personal thought as opposed to a specific issue with their salt mix.

I won't use certain lines of natural seawater due to excessive metals in it.

That only leaves a few to choose from, such as Instant Ocean and Tropic Marin Pro. The remaining ones might all be fine for me, but IO is lower in cost, especially if you get it when it goes on sale (which it frequently does). It also has a very long track record of success in many aquaria with relatively few concerning issues of bad batches.

[syrinx]

I don`t use coralife because of their poor quality control on their other products. Instant ocean and reef crystals is the mainstay of my systems. The only reason it might seem their is a QC issue with instant ocean is because so many people use it there is more user error.

[preef]

I've been using Coralife for years. It's the cheapest for me, mixes well and the numbers are consistent. I also liked the fact that each bucket was packaged into 3 separate bags. The T-shirt was nice. I went through a lot of those shirts when I stained my house last summer.

Unfortunately, I saw they changed their bucket design. From what I heard there are no more individual bags and no more shirt. Hopefully nothing else changed in the formula.

[KSzegi]

I use coralife because for whatever reason, it seems to work better for me and my tank. I started out with IO for quite some time .... then tried coralife. My change water tested more consistently for me, it was easier to keep some of my tank levels up without dosing as much, it dissolved quicker and left less residue and I perceived a change for the better in my tank after the switch. Now that change for the better could've just been a maturing tank or something else but once I saw an improvement I wasn't going back!

Not that I swear by it or anything but it has been working well for me and my tank so I just haven't seen any reason to try any other brand .... one of those 'if it ain't broke don't fix it" reasons!

[radicaltimes]

Instant Ocean. I have a 120 gallon reef and have to dose any way. I've used Reef Crystals but switched back to IO.

Glad to see you back Randy