best salt for mixed reef?

well im starting to get more into the lps and sps part of the hobby and needed something that could keep up with the calcium demands. i want to start doing water changes twice weekly to keep up with the demands, but if i can get a good salt then i wont have to. so, what would be a good salt high in calcium that i could use? i dont test for them, therefore i dont want to dose. which is the best brand?

 

Reef crystals. I can't say it's the best, but it's what I use. They do add extra calcium and mag to it.

 

if your considering cost reef crystals is best bang for your buck IMO. if you want the really high quality stuff H2Ocean is great. I've also used ESV saltwater system and its amazing stuff but boy ohh boy is mixing it a pain.

 

ok so reef crystals. ill get that next time.

 

I recommend seachem reef salt personally. always consistent with calcium magnesium and alk. (just a personal experience of course)

 

reef crystals is the stuff

 

Reef crystals is all right, but I found it to be a little inconsistent as far as Ca and dkh was concerned. You should also test Ca, Alk and Mg if you are going to start getting into hard corals, just because you don't want to dose doesn't mean you shouldn't test for those and you may find you need to dose those elements and in the long, dosing may be cheaper then doing water changes twice a week.

 

I use ReefCrystals. Same as DiversDen lol... So i found that out by their plastering of the product everywhereeeeee

 

this is not a answerable question period
The easier question is what is the most popular? (shown at the bottom of article)


Artificial Seawater: Which Mix?
One of the first things that most marine aquarists ask is, “Which mix?” Many are commercially available; some are widely used, and some less so. Many aquarists just use the cheapest one that their local stores have in stock. But what evidence is there about which salts are best?
To be honest, the evidence for using one salt mix over another is marginal at best. Certainly some are better, and some may be downright undesirable, but no simple ranking can be made. Every artificial salt mix varies from natural seawater's concentrations of some ions. Amazingly, many that claim to try to match seawater actually do a surprisingly poor job, and differ significantly. Sometimes this deviation from nature is intentional, although most aquarists don’t even know how their mixes deviate. I sometimes think the companies don’t always know either, based on their public and private comments about their own salt mixes.
A variety of factors prevent companies from exactly matching seawater's concentrations of many of the minor and trace elements in seawater. The biggest of these is cost. The four big ions in seawater (sodium, chloride, sulfate and magnesium) must be added in large concentration to seawater. Unless they are very pure (and very expensive), these primary ingredients will contain impurities that rise to the level of, or even exceed, the levels of other ions naturally occurring in seawater. So companies work as best they can, within reasonable cost constraints, to control impurities to appropriate levels. More expensive salt mixes can theoretically do a better job by purchasing purer raw materials, but that does not ensure that those companies do so.

Artificial Seawater: Chemical Analysis of Mixes
Several studies have analyzed the chemical constituents of salt mixes. Some of these are linked below for those who want to investigate further.

• "The Composition of Several Synthetic Seawater Mixes," by Marlin Atkinson and Craig Bingman

• "A Chemical Analysis of Select Trace Elements in Synthetic Sea Salts and Natural Seawater," by Timothy A. Hovanec, Ph.D. and Jennifer L. Coshland

• "Inland Reef Aquaria Salt Study, Part I," by Mathew Marulla and Thomas O’Toole

• "Inland Reef Aquaria Salt Study, Part II," by Mathew Marulla and Thomas O’Toole

The problem with using such studies to select a salt mix is that, while we can look to see which brands most closely match natural seawater, the problem is that none really does, and it becomes very difficult to decide what is best. For example, is it better to have too much sulfate or too little fluoride? Too much borate or too little bromide? Too much strontium or too little potassium? No one knows. Ask that question about nearly every chemical constituent, and the true answer is, “No one knows.” Even worse, salt mixes periodically change their formulations and bulk material suppliers so their properties change. Even if a salt study analyzes so many samples that it accurately reflects all of the batches of a single salt brand on the market at a given time, a few months later it may be of little value. Several manufacturers, for example, have publicly stated that they have changed their formulation since some of the studies linked above were released.
There are some obvious chemical differences between salt mixes that aquarists readily discover for themselves. These generally relate to their readily measurable levels of calcium, alkalinity and magnesium. Even here, it is not simple to decide what is best because aquarists often intentionally keep water parameters that are different from natural seawater (for example, maintaining higher alkalinity than in the ocean), or might want the mix to have an overabundance of something to offset losses in the aquarium (magnesium, for example). Bear in mind that all of these, and most especially alkalinity, are almost immediately altered in reef aquaria by the necessary supplementation, and that the exact values in the salt mix may not be particularly important. They are also easily adjusted by aquarists who want to do so.
So, despite being a chemist and having taken many of these types of measurements myself, I don’t put much emphasis on such chemical studies. Perhaps it would be wise to toss out of contention those that seem seriously flawed, but that leaves many of them. Better salt mix decisions might be made using the types of information described later in this article.

Artificial Seawater: Biological Analysis of Mixes
At least a couple of studies have also examined salt mixes from a biological perspective. That is, they looked at the effects of different salt mixes on organisms living in them. These are linked below for those who want to pursue them, although the final results from Eric Borneman’s study (second two links) have not yet been published.

• "The Toxicity of Some Freshly Mixed Artificial Sea Water: A Bad Beginning For A Reef Aquarium," by Ronald L. Shimek, Ph.D.

• "Sea Salts, Part One: A review and a new study to determine their effects on reef aquarium inhabitants," by Eric Borneman

• "Sea Salts, Part Two: The M.A.R.S.H. Salt Study," by Eric Borneman and Kim Lowe

In theory, these sorts of studies have an advantage over full chemical analyses in that, for at least the specific biological endpoints being examined, they rank order different types of seawater from best to worst. For example, those causing the least fish diseases, faster coral growth, least chance of growing pest algae, etc. Such information could be very valuable.
However, running high quality studies is immensely costly and time consuming. In short, it is similar to running many identical reef aquaria in parallel, and comparing them in one or more important ways. In practice, the compromises made sometimes weaken the usefulness of the conclusions. The concern, in my opinion, with these types of studies is two-fold:
1. The organisms tested sometimes do not represent those that aquarists typically grow. For example, sea urchin embryos have been used for this type of study by Ron Shimek (first study above). However, few reef aquarists rear sea urchin embryos. If a salt mix is not optimal for sea urchin embryos, but results in high quality reef aquaria (like those represented by Reef Central Tanks of the Month), is that an important factor in selecting a salt mix?
2. Both of the studies linked above use salt mixes in ways that are not used by reef aquarists; for example, using 100% raw artificial saltwater (Shimek’s study above), or using monthly water changes with 100% raw artificial seawater as the only method of nutrient export and calcium import (Borneman’s study above). I’ll pick one chemical issue to play the straw man with this type of study, but other similar concerns are equally valid.
From the types of chemical analyses described in the previous section, for example, we know that many salt mixes contain potentially stressful levels of ammonia, present as an impurity (say, 0.17 ppm in Instant Ocean). In a normal reef aquarium, this ammonia is diluted out, and easily and rapidly removed by nitrifying bacteria. For example, using it for a 10% water change will boost ammonia only to a safer 0.017 ppm. But these studies used it for 100% water changes, and one of the cases (Shimek's study above) provided no nitrifying capacity at all. Consequently, the results of these studies may not reflect aspects of the salt mixes that are important in normal use, but may be important only in specialized lab tests.
In a recent commentary on his study, Borneman stated:
“I will say that, at least from being familiar with the data and the appearance of the tanks and the survival and appearance of the species that there are certainly some salts I would prefer to use in my tank and some that I probably wouldn't use again, even though I have used them for many years without any obvious negative effects. I have a feeling that the reason these differences are not observed by those using these salts, myself included, is that the complexity of the reef tank community is able to mitigate the good and bad aspects of the salts that became apparent in a more controlled environment.”
I certainly agree with at least the second half, and think it supports the message that I am trying to get across to beginning aquarists: home reef aquarium “quality” should be the arbiter of what is a suitable salt mix, not a lab test that purports to show effects that may not be reproduced in real home aquaria.

Artificial Seawater: Real Aquariums and Salt Mixes
So, if we cannot rely exclusively on chemical and biological testing of salt mixes as a guide to selection, what can we use? Well, we can obviously look to see what other reef aquarists are using. But, of course, you’d want to select mixes that have resulted in success. Unfortunately, a “poll” of aquarists may simply reflect what they use, not what they are successful with. It may also include a lot of votes from aquarists who have not yet had the aquarium long enough to deem it a success or those who have not used more than one or two brands.
Here’s a related suggestion. I looked through the past five years of Reef Central's Tanks of the Month, and recorded what salt mixes they used. Here's what I found (Table 1):

Table 1. Salt mixes used in the past five years of Reef Central's Tanks of the Month.​

​

​

Salt Mix

Number of Examples​

​

Unidentified

>30​

​

Instant Ocean

9​

​

Reef Crystals

7​

​

Tropic Marin

5​

​

Tropic Marin Pro

2​

​

Oceanic

2​

​

Red Sea

2​

​

Coralife

1​

​

Catalina Water Company

1​

​

Seachem

1​

​

Sera

1​

​

Preis

1​

​

I propose that the exact numbers and ranking are not too important, as they reflect aquarists' choices, costs, and perhaps general availability, as opposed to the “betterness” of salt mixes. However, any mix used in any Tank of the Month shows that it can facilitate a wonderful aquarium. Further, picking one of the more commonly encountered mixes in Table 1 may be prudent, because more than one aquarist has shown that a beautiful and successful aquarium can be attained using one of them. So, my suggestion is to pick one of the top half dozen mixes above, and then don’t spend any more time worrying about whether your mix is the “best” one or not. I have used Instant Ocean for more than 10 years, largely because it has had a long and wide track record of success.

 

I use Oceanic and it seems to have really high levels of Ca. Sometimes the level is so high it's off the charts! My coral are happy.