Help!! lets do a little experiment

I can do the bio sea marine

 

I use Corallife salt.

 

Yeah I can do salinity. It might be a couple days but I will post results.

 

I have Red Sea pro. I will mix up a batch 2mrw for you. I can test it everything.

 

i use rc and you have results of that salt coming from other users and im out of a couple of my test kits,sorry.love to see the results of this though,

 

@ Armydog do u possibly think water softner rock salt would give a accurate reading. Lol

 

Just remember that salt mixes will inherently vary with volume and weight to produce a specific salinity because of water absorbed from the atmosphere, even if it's an unopened bag you might not get the same results as someone else if the bags were not packaged with the same environmental conditions although one would think that particular difference would be small with the same lot of unopened bags, it's something to think about.

Not to mention test to test variability if using the same kit, or calibration/age effects. It's also hard to have multiple people produce similar results with color based tests since it's a bit subjective. And if using different test brands from each other the results could really be different.

 

If you really want accuracy an entire sealed bag should be mixed with a given amount of water according to bag size with all samples using the same RO/DI water. Then have the same person using the same test kits do multiple samples from each brand. Some brands say to mix longer, so that part is a grey area but in general I would follow the manufacturers directions.

Of course I don't have any salt tanks now so don't listen to me! Haha.

 

Hart has very valid points. Especially regarding test kits - using the same test kit and color variations that people see.

If this is an interesting topic for many people, you could improve the accuracy significantly by doing it at a regional meeting. Have people bring the different salt mixes to the meeting - use the same RO/DI water for all tests and same test kits for all tests.

 

With enough independent samples of each you can overcome the variance from different people and test kits. I'll take a reef crystals measurement for you to add to your study. Just be sure to collect test kit brands and water sources. Who knows, we might find out something else interesting too.

Anecdotally I think RC is great. Salinity from my nonscientific batches has been in the 35-36ppt range with a boatload of calcium (~500) and high alk (~11dkh). Ill do a weight by weight measure tonight, though.

AA