Mixing of 2 salts

For a while now I have been using Oceanic. My calcium after a water change is over 500. I've been mixing Instant Ocean along with Oceanic in order to lower the calcium a little and it seems to be working fine.

Someone on another board was warning me that they had heard of tanks crashing just because they swithched from one salt to another.

Is there anything to this? I've been mixing the two for a couple of months now.

Cindy

 

Cindy,

I cannot think of one reason that switching or mixing salt brands would cause a tank to crash in the short term. Sounds like yet another saltwater urban myth to me

John

 

It didn't make much sense to me either. I think there were a couple of people from RC that attibuted their tank crashes to changing salts. That was the only thing that was different from what they normally did.

Cindy

 

Cindy,

There was a whole lot of talk a while back about different salt mixes causing DSB's to fail because the salt mixes were high in certain metals.

This THEORY soon became a legend in itself and of course some salt mixes tested and found to contain trace metals were quickly blamed for every tank crash even if the salt mix was used just once.

John

 

The only problems I have heard about is a reaction in certain corals, which has been proven. It seems if you are using something like IO and switch to Oceanic some people were have sps bleaching and algae blooms. There is a lot of people out there mixing salts now to get benefits from different salts.

Mike

 

Actually I did start out with IO and switched to OCeanic because it dissolves so quickly. When I switched nothing happend. But then I don't have any sps either. The mixture of the two seem to work well and I don't have an algae problem.

Cindy

 

Table salt seems to work well for me

 

[quote author=beamer link=board=General;num=1105679151;start=0#5 date=01/14/05 at 11:28:50]Actually I did start out with IO and switched to OCeanic because it dissolves so quickly. When I switched nothing happend. But then I don't have any sps either. The mixture of the two seem to work well and I don't have an algae problem.

Cindy[/quote]

Good! I have seen a lot of sps tanks bleach and algae kick up with oceanic.

Mike

 

[quote author=JohnO link=board=General;num=1105679151;start=0#3 date=01/14/05 at 00:43:07]
Cindy,

There was a whole lot of talk a while back about different salt mixes causing DSB's to fail because the salt mixes were high in certain metals.

This THEORY soon became a legend in itself and of course some salt mixes tested and found to contain trace metals were quickly blamed for every tank crash even if the salt mix was used just once.

John
[/quote]


I agree with John on this one. It seemed to be "the only answer" but now we are left with the thoughts of DSB failing over time. I think the legends were born from DSB failure and the salt change had little to do with it

J

 

[quote author=beamer link=board=Salt;num=1105722481;start=0#0 date=01/14/05 at 00:05:51]For a while now I have been using Oceanic. My calcium after a water change is over 500.  
[/quote]

I'm in the process of switching over from Oceanic to Marine Environment for the opposite reason. I can't get the calcium levels to stay up above 400. I'm mixing the salt in as I do water changes and so far no problems and the levels are getting better.

There might be some problems if there are drastic changeovers from one to another but most of the salts have basically the same ingredients albeit some mixes may be monitored for quality (as far as being uniform) better than others. 8)

Drew