Real Ocean Water vs Synthetic water??

At my fish store they have Real ocean water and synthetic water. The real stuff is $.50 p/g and the synthetic is $1.10 p/g. He said the synthetic is better and will help my tank a lot? Is this factual or is he just trying to make more money?

 

Natural Sea Water in a Reef Tank??? - The Reef Tank

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour...aXPAFEeMgIcUMqXXQ&sig2=8r51kxCPfWLcA31Ifj-4Eg

 

i would buy the synthetic..

i think there are a couple place in the country that has free NSW, but it has like a pipe that goes 20 something miles into the ocean..

pollution is the biggest concern with NSW

 

if you wanted you could find a grocery store with the outside rodi machines..thats what i use and costs me 25cents a gallon

and i pay 44$ for 150 gallons of corallife salt

i would start making my own water if you can..its cheaper in the long run

 

Buy the salt mix or buy the salt and mix it yourself. If youre local here to LA area, the "real ocean water" is garbage. I've had nothing but algae blooms and ph problems with it and stopped using years ago.

 

I know corals in the wild are happy enough in real seawater

but I also know I would not want to risk running it in my tank
mans intervention in the sea, concerns me there could be things in there
I dont want in my reef tank

Steve

 

Sea water sold at stores really isn't sea water by the time you get it. Seems counter intuitive, at least until you think about it. The problem is while in transit, chemical reactions occur and certain trace elements break down and precipitate out. also, there is plankton that breaks down and would cause ammonia and nitrate problems, so, to avoid this it needs to be filtered. So, in the end, in reality, using a synthetic salt mix can be closer to natural saltwater than natural salt water. That is unless you collect your own (from far offshore, inshore can be too polluted) and use it immediately.

 

Surgeon, if this is the LFS in Huntington beach on Harbor Blvd, I got my NSW from there for years without a problem (Seaside is the name). You can also go down to Newport Beach at the marine center and get water. The local small public aquariums used it, as does the marine center. When I was there most stores only had NSW and in over 10 years I never had a problem.

 

Yeah all the fish stores around here have synthetic and catalina water. Apparently they say that the Catalina doesn't have nutrients in it because its so processed

 

I use real ocean water from scripps