Best Brand of Salt Mix

Yeah, I just kinda looked at the guy at the store till he said it was an independent study. I will tell you that I use that salt and it is great!!!! a little pricey at $28 for 50gal. But you get what you pay for

 

How old is that however? Most brands have changed the formula in the last year. My salt isnt on there though aswell, just regular Red Sea, not the Coral Pro which tests great, even 1320mG...

 

It defently older then a year. Of coarse that is the only part that is cut off when this was copied. But it looks like it is a couple years older....

 

hmm. :-/ I wonder if there is a more recent version?

 

Beaches. The foam you see is the bit of nature we are mimicking with a skimmer. In my mind making skimming 'natural'. Albeit artificially.

yeah.



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Agreed, everything in your tank is "live". Live glass, live plastic, etc. The difference with rock is the depth (hmm, that's not the right word). In other words, anaerobic bacteria. Your live glass and live plastic only have aerobic bacteria. They serve very different purposes.


Another fine point in this debate is stocking - specifically overstocking. The ocean is not over stocked (obviously). An overstocked tank can't get by with no mechanical filtration. So that's key regardless of which "natural" method you go with.

 

One small difference- In "nature", the gunk is washed back into the water when it rains.

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As far as depth is concerned (the word works just fine- the deeper the water penetrates the rock, the less oxygen it has), you also get the same effect with a DSB.

I guess the most impressive part about the debate over "What makes Live Rock live" is that people will gladly pay $6 - $10/lb for the same thing they could have by placing $2/lb dry base rock in their tank for a couple of weeks, when I can buy true live rock (cultivated from the ocean with all it's little hitch-hikers) for the same price at my LFS, with the majority of those critters actually being beneficial to our systems. Picking off the "bad guys" is a small price to pay for getting the rest.

I won't start a new debate, here. However, some will argue that DO is the limiting factor, not filtration. I wouldn't know for sure, but by their calculations, I was well overstocked with no issues. We didn't even have mechanical filters, nevermind skimmers, back then- just the good ol' UGF.

Cheers

 

Both matter.

 

I assumed as much, but c'mon... 1 inch of fish for every 5 gal tank capacity?? That would mean you're "overstocked" with just one mature Engineer Goby in a 30 gal tank!! How much filtration could one possibly need for that?? Add, say, a couple damsels, a clown, and a wrasse and you're really asking for trouble! :

FTR, I had even more than that (a white Atlantic Condy, a Giant Hawaiian Featherduster, and an Electric Blue Hermit) in a 20 gal with nothing but a UGF and a couple of airstones. It was still doing great 5 years later when I sold the tank to a neighbor.

Cheers

 

An inch per gallon, or 5 gallons, or whatever ratio, is totally incorrect. The length, width, and height of a fish combine to determine total biomass, which fairly directly determines the amount of waste it will produce; it's not just an issue of length.

 

Exactly. That was my point. The same can be said for a lot of other myths, fables, and marketing schemes that are preached as facts in our hobby.

Their diet and metabolism are equally important.

Cheers