Calcium Chloride from road salt?

Hey guys. Today i went to home depot to get some lumber for the stand i'm building in my basement to allow for a "display" refugium as well. Anyways, i was amazed as i needed to pick up some road salt to melt the ice on my front steps. The road salt is CaCl2 ... and cheap! So i started doin some research and found that some of these contain NaCl and Urea. So it would affect salinity.. soo when making water for a water change.. you could add this stuff first... test for salinity.. add salt appropriately... test everything else... then add to tank if good?

I don't really know how urea would affect the tank.. if it's just trace it would get taken up by the protein skimmer i believe...

http://www.kissnersalt.com/images/pdf/Calcium Chloride Pellets bag.pdf

Any thoughts?

Evan.

 

Why risk it.

Salt mix not all that expensive.

Check out Drs. Foster and Smith...On sale, cheap shipping!

 

Well, everyone buys these CaCl2 additives for crazy amounts per bottle and using these crazy expensive calcium reactors when you can get a huge bag of CaCl2 pellets for practically nothing in comparison.. just a thought..
Evan.

 

Calcium Chloride not Sodium Chloride, lol....... Omard, Calcium Chloride is technically kalkwasser. i dont know about using it as something else may have been added to prevent clumps or whatnot and is most likely not preferable in a reef!

 

Urea is basically ammonia and CO2. If you add it to your tank it will dissociate in water and act as a fertilizer, so you might be risking feeding an algae bloom or having toxic levels of ammonia in the tank. I guess it depends on how much urea is in the mix, but it sounds sketchy to me.

 

use "Mrs.wages pickling lime" instead as an afoordable alternative! Cuttingras uses it as i believe!

 

<--- canadian.. unsure of whether i can get my hands on that stuff.
Well, i'll look into it some more and check my local walmart store for pickling lime.
Thanks,
Evan

 

your very welcome!

 

While you're at it, see if you can purchase pure calcium chloride (with no additives). If you can find it, you can pretty much rule out ever having to buy calcium supplements again

 

Actually I found a source for pure calcium chloride. I went down to the chemistry department at my University and talked to an old prof of mine. I got a stupid high mark in his class and he asked me to do research with him so i figure i might be able to take advantage of he situation. He ordered me a bunch of calcium chloride CHEAP! Maybe i will do research with him after all

Evan.