Help!! lets do a little experiment

Found it! Aquarium Water Testing did a test on the major salt brands a while ago and i've been trying to find this test results for the last couple of weeks. Worth browse. Forgive the Reefcentral thread link but it's to a PDF download from AWT.

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=1317416

 

Also keep in mind that at any time manufactures can change the salt mix and it probably does vary somewhat between lots as they switch source lots of raw materials. I would look at older tests without holding too much value in the results with the longer the test was ago, the less likely the results are to be valid.

IMO If possible, bring unopened salt and make the entire batch before testing. Too much settling and absorbing water occurs to get good results from say making 5g water from a 160g bucket of IO. Need to make the entire 160 gallons with the water weighed out. Then look at salinity.

I also think that you should look at either salinity for the box OR amount of ca, alk and mg and mix the brands to the same SG if doing that. Since salinity directly impacts those levels the brand that mixes to the highest SG will automatically have higher levels.

Personally it really annoyed me when using ESV that it mixed up to such a low SG when following their directions. For such and expensive mix that is made for reef use, not fish only, I found it dishonest that it mixed so low. However it was nice when I tested it with triton and posted on reef2reef the president of ESV changed the formula after I shared the results with him and they used a couple independent labs to verify.

 

I just wanted to bring up those points for people to consider in the back of their minds before they jump to conclusions about the results. The amount of testing and data points would have to be extreme before I would put faith in any results. Honestly I don't think multiple people using different brands of test kits will produce results that anyone should use to choose salt brands. Any results or trends you might see imo would not be real, although it might appear so. There is a great deal of error even in the best hobby test kits.

It sounds like a fun club activity, but I just want to caution folks about reading too much into the results. If you're really curious send samples of entire batches to triton along with RO/DI source water. But once again that only gives accurate results for right now and the lot tested. No clue when the formula will change.

 

I totally agree with you. With no control, all you get is a bunch of numbers that no one can say it accurate or not accurate. And I think there are alot of people that would/might jump to conclusions based on the results.

 

There was a thread here about a year ago on Reef2Reef that was interesting. It was primarily Reef Crystals and ESV discussed but some other people did Triton tests as well. ​

 

If Triton proves to be too costly I wouldn't be opposed to doing this at the upcoming des moines/ames region meeting if we have an adequate array of brands. I just switched to oceanic and would happily throw that into the mix as well. We could all use the same water source and testing kit?

 

Triton is $49 a peice. They do doscounts for 3 or more.