Oceanic Salt

[NaCl_H2O]

Can't find it now, but the other day there was a "What's in Oceanic Salt" discussion, so I fired off a message to Oceanic. Below was their reply. I sent a response asking if they had specs for trace elements too, but I have not received a response. I'll add to this post if I get a reponse.

FWIW ...

Oceanic Natural Sea Salt Specs:

When 0.29 pounds of Oceanic Natural Sea Salt are mixed in 1-gallon of Reverse Osmosis water it will yield a crystal clear solution with the following results:
• Specific gravity 1.021 to 1.023
• pH 8.0 to 8.2
• Calcium 420 - 460 parts per million
• Magnesium 1250 - 1350 parts per million
• Potassium 380 - 400 parts per million
• Bromide 65 parts per million
• Oceanic Natural Sea Salt does not contain phosphates or nitrates
• Extremely low moisture content (prevents clumping or caking)

[Ram_Puppy]

I have to say I question that. When I mix my Oceanic salt up with RODI, I get a PH of 7.8 and have to bring it up using a buffer. this has been true for 2 buckets worth. I was a little hacked when I had to do this for 110 gallons when I filled up the ghetto tank initially. While I havent experienced the red/brown algae problems people moan and groan about on reefcentral, and there is nothing but anecdotal evidence to say it is the oceanic salt, I figure I am not going to take a chance. So, I started doing some research and decided what I want in a salt.

1) Easy to Mix
2) Mixes balanced to natural sea water levels, high alk and calcium are ok but not neccessary.
3) If possible not IO, Kent (same brand now), I feel these companies have rested on their laurels for a while, I come from an industry where change is lightning fast, and as technology improves and we understand more about our reef tanks, the methods of making salt should change as well, for the better of course. Not to knock IO or Kent, they make a great product.

I was for a while, until tonight actually, thinking I was going to go with Fritz Super Salt until I read one thing, the salt they use is FOOD GRADE. one would think that is good, but it still allows for a certain level of impurities.

I initially dismissed Tropic Marin Pro Reef becuase the text on their site led me to believe it is optimized for those using calcium reactors, however, reading more into it shows it mixes up exactly like sea water (as far as major and trace elements go) and more importantly, is made of Pharmaceutical Grade materials. There is a reason it's more expensive... but I figure hey, my critters are worth it.

[GaryP]

When I have tested Oceanic for calcium I have gotten numbers in the 500-525 range. I think they have dropped the buffer in order to raise the calcium. The one thing that bothers me is that, according to Richard, Oceanic isn't adding trace metals to their salt. Their logic is that people are already adding trace metals and its not needed. I'm sure the trace metals are more expensive and significantly raise the cost of their product. Well... I stopped adding trace metals based on my logic that said as long as I am doing frequent water changes they aren't necessary and there is no way to test for all of them anyway. I'm really unhappy with the low alkalinity of the product. When I tested it was around 5 dKH. Admittedly, this may have been because the saltwater was not freshly made. Alkalinity is not stable the way that salt is. You notice that Oceanic doesn't make any claims as to their alkalinity. Also, the magnesium is a little lower then where I like to keep mine (1400-1450 ppm). There is a lot of controversy as to the importance of some of the traces metals such as manganese and strontium but I think as long as you are close to natural levels you should be OK.

I'm not sure what I'm going to switch to next, but I do think I am going to switch as soon as I use the bucket I have now. Tropic Marine or Bio-Assay may be an option. I'll just have to do some more research.

[NaCl_H2O]

Gary, I'm mixing up 60g for a water change today. I'll test it soon after mixing for Ca, Alk, ang Mg and let you know.

[GaryP]

OK, please do.

[GaryP]

OK, please do. I think I have a strontium and mangtanese test kit. I'll see if I can find them.

[Ram_Puppy]

wow Gary, Richard told you something he didn't tell me, I am going to have to turn my 'prophet of richard' mantle over to you for a while. :) lol

if you choose the bio-assay, be very careful, and do no more than 5% water changes each time until your mostly Bio-Assay, people who have aggresibly shifted to that salt have had issues, something to do with an additive that is in most salts, but not in bio-assay. People who have started up new tanks with it seem to have really good luck.

[GaryP]

Richard doesn't have many good things to say about Oceanic.

I'd heard that about Bio-Assay. We had some people switching to it a while back.

[scuba_steveo]

I am not anti Oceanic salt but since switching to IO my tank has looked much better. I was doing large water changes with Oceanic and saw nothing. But a few IO changes and the tank looks much better. I am doinf another large IO water change today. If I were to change from IO I would go to Tropic Marin.

[NaCl_H2O]

OK, please do.

SG = 1.024
dKH = 8.4
Ca = 600+ :o :o
Mg = ~1500
PH = 8.0

... I'm gonna add some buffer

[GaryP]

I'd wait and add it to the tank, not the water change water.

Those number are just a little different than what Oceanic gave you, aren't they? Especially pH, calcium, and magnesium. I wouldn't be too concerned with a 8.4 dKH. Remember, fo you are already adding buffer to your tank and are only doing a 10% water change, it will only make a very small difference.

[GaryP]

Let's do a simple high school chemistry dilution problem just to show you what I mean. Let's assume your alkalinity in your tank is 10 and you are doing a 10% water change in a 600 gal. system like yours.

Alkalinity of mixture = (540 X 10) + (60 X 8.4) / 600 = 9.84 dKH

Is a difference in .16 dKH worth the potential of the calcium to precipitate in your water change water? With 600 ppm calcium that a very high likelihood. You are just wasting your buffer and getting a bunch of scale built up in your water barrel. Once a precipitation begins, its like the whole thing crashes and you end up with water low in both calcium and alkalinity.

[Tim Marvin]

LMAO...... :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol ..... You guys crack me up.... Blame your tank problems on your maintenance, lights, pumps, or anything else. I get awesome results from Oceanic.... I have tried every salt you have mentioned and lots more. Oceanic salt give the biggest bang for the buck. My second choice would be Fritz.

[RobertG]

I am with Tim LMAO!!!! Oceanic ROCKS!!! Never any issues.

[DeletedAccount]

Marine Environment rocks!

I felt left out.....

[BIGBIRD123]

You can't beat Oceanic. When my numbers are a little down, a water change does the trick. Best mixing salt around.

Steve

[NaCl_H2O]

Tim, I intend to keep using Oceanic - I just wanted to check the specs. I have had no problems except maybe the dKH level, no biggie.

[Tim Marvin]

In actuality most of the salts are pretty good, I just like the high calcium levels. I can add a little buffer from time to time if needed. I usually just mix it up and dump it right in tank and the Kalk takes care of the buffering. I liked Fritz also when I used it except for having to stir the brine up before useing it. Oceanic just melts when it touches water and I find it very affordable and easy to use. All the other HIGH dollar salt mixes haven't produced any better results for me, but I only produce corals. I may have a different opinion if I were breeding urchins, carnations, Marine Bettas, and other hard to do things. I am not pushing one salt over another I just hate seeing people blame the problems in the tanks they keep on one specific thing, like salt. It is usually a number of things. Sure if you use Oceanic salt and do a water change once a year your going to have problems, but you would have them with all the salts. I usually keep a pretty heavily loaded tank and no problems yet.

[captexas]

I think the people that complain about Oceanic salt are the same ones that complained about IO back before Oceanic came out. I think there will always be slight variences when you are mass producing a mixture of substances like a salt mix. I just don't see how that can cause all the problems that people are blaming on it.

[Tim Marvin]

I think the people that complain about Oceanic salt are the same ones that complained about IO back before Oceanic came out. I think there will always be slight variences when you are mass producing a mixture of substances like a salt mix. I just don't see how that can cause all the problems that people are blaming on it.

Exactly....

[MikeDeL]

The only complaints I have about IO, and why I like Oceanic, is that it is harder to mix and the calcium is low. I figure Oceanic is worth the little bit more it cost. I dont have to add anything to it and I dont have to spend forever trying to get it to disolve. I did notice that when I switched to Oceanic my cyano magically disappeared. LOL j/k

[NaCl_H2O]

The best salt mix is probably a bucket of each brand, all mixed together :)

BTW - I did my 20% water change today w/Oceanic and I didn't have an immediate algae bloom ;) ;)

[Richard]

My name always seems to get mentioned on all the oceanic salt threads. So maybe this will clear things up a bit....

Gary - I never said that Oceanic was not adding trace metals to their salt. In my conversation with oceanic the guy said it does not have as many trace ELEMENTS added as say Kent (his example). There are some threads on RC that mention some specific elements that are not contained in or deliberately added to oceanic salt. I don't remember what they were and I don't remember if they were trace metals.

OK, now the algae thing...
From my own experience and that of a number of customers, I believe there may have been a batch of oceanic salt that caused some algae problems. I used oceanic salt to start up my 46 gallon and coralline algae exploded. Then I started up my 215 with oceanic, di water, and liverock that I cured for 4 months. Within 48 hours the tank was entirely coated in a brownish/reddish slime algae that I believe was dinoflagellates but I never looked at it under a microscope. It definately was not typical cyano which would be expected with any new tank. This stuff could be completely siphoned off and the tank would be covered again by the end of the day. Weeks of water changes with that oceanic salt did not help. There were no measurable phosphates or nitrates in the tank or freshly mixed Oceanic SW. I switched to IO and it all went away (must have been magic). At the same time there where numerous threads on RC of people having the same problem and suspecting it was the salt. Some of them said they were growing the stuff in their mixing bucket after a day or two. I'm sure plenty of people have jumped on the band wagon and just blamed normal algae problems on the salt. If the oceanic lovers want to believe it is beyond the realm of possibility that a company new to making salt could have had a bad batch go and ridicule anyone who thinks it could have happened then that's fine with me :roll . I don't think we'll ever know for sure because none of the salt manufacters are willing to put a batch number on their salt (except Tropic Marin).

That issue aside, the main reason I don't like oceanic salt is that at a specific gravity of 1.024-1.025 where I like to keep my tanks the calcium level is well above 550. At those levels it is very likely that you will precipitate out carbonates and have low alk and therefore have a lower ph. There are numerous threads of people having these problems when starting up a tank with oceanic salt. This shouldn't be an issue if your switching to oceanic or if you start a tank up with something like IO and then use oceanic for water changes thereafter. Oceanic targeted a Ca level of ~ 450 at a specific gravity in the 1.021 range.

If I thought oceanic was a horrible product then I wouldn't sell it but I do sell it. It's just not the salt I recommend or use. I will be interested to see how popular this salt is if oceanic ever quits having it on sale to gain market share. I'm not sure if people are going to still love it if it's priced around $60 bucks a bucket. That's alot of money for some extra calcium chloride IMO.

I just started using Tropic Marin Pro Reef, I'll see how I like it. Oh, batch number 32154 ;)

[GaryP]

Richard,

I apologize for misquoting you.

[NaCl_H2O]

Hope my starting this thread wasn't taken as pointed at anyone. I am asked by other MAAST members, and LFS staff if I have any problems with Oceanic. My query to Oceanic and testing was so that I would know the chemistry, and posted it FOMMI (For Other MAAST Member's Info :) )

I have used IO and Kent in the past, and always had low Ca levels. I like the high Ca levels and the solubility is great when mixing 60g+ of water at a time for a change, and I also like the price :) I am having to add buffer to keep my dKH level up, but hoping other equipment will balance that out eventually.

I do hope Oceanic responds to the "Trace Elements" question, since that is somewhat of a concern too?

Besides, the dark blue buckets are really cool 8) ;)

[Tim Marvin]

Like I stated, biggest bang for the BUCK. If the price goes up, I'll probably switch. I dose lots of Kalk so I don't see the low PH issues and they may have something to do with not having bad algae problems also. I had good results from Tropic Marin also.

[Richard]

Gary - No need to apologize. I didn't mean to sound irritated. It was late and I was typing quick so I could go to bed. I was just stating why oceanic wasn't my favorite since my name was mentioned. This hobby is mostly based on opinion anyway so if oceanic is working for someone then why change. If someone thinks it's causing a problem then switch and see if you get better results with something else.



Marine Environment rocks!


Too bad your the only one who will buy it :D .

[OldSalty]

OK that does it, I'm switching to morton table salt with iodine :skeezy

[NaCl_H2O]

OK that does it, I'm switching to morton table salt with iodine :skeezy

lol ... Please let us know how it works for you ;)

[MikeDeL]

OK that does it, I'm switching to morton table salt with iodine :skeezy

The HEB brand does just as good a job, and half the price. :lol

[brewercm]

Too bad you can't use the same salt you use for water softeners. It's looking like I'm starting my own salt factory at time.

Hmmmm, maybe there's something in this idea. <_<

[Polkster13]

For those that have too much time on their hands and want to read up on the manufacturer's "claims" and "allegations" about each other's salt mixes, please review the following. I really liked the last article (Yes, I have too much free time on my hands) as it was done aby a marine club. Maybe we could do our own tests and see what kinds of results we come up with. GaryP, are you game?

http://www.northcoastmarines.com/salt_comparison.htm
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-03/rs/feature/index.htm
http://www.aqcraft.com/s9911.html
http://www.marineaquariums.net/sp0003.html
http://aqcraft.com/w0013.html
http://www.aquacraft.net/s9910.html
http://www.calgaryaquariumsociety.com/Articles/Web_Site_Review_Marine_Aquarist.html

[Polkster13]

If you want to know all of the elements that make up NSW, then check out this link:

http://ozreef.org/content/view/25/2/

Only the first 21 of the 80 elements listed are of any value to us. The rest are in such minute quantities, that you would have to have a huge amount of salt before you could add any of these. Also of note, if you were to add Zinc (26th in list), you would also need to add Arsenic and Uranium. Not something I would want going into my tank!

[GaryP]

The problems with analyzing the claims of salt vendors is that is exactly what they are, claims. There is no hard data to back them up. Look at the difference between the data Steve got from Oceanic and what he got when he tested. Some of that can be attributed to the difference in salinity and testing methods, but not all. There have been some attempts at generating independent data using laboratory instrumentation on the composition of various salt mixes. This was a couple of years ago and Oceanic and some of the other new salts such as Red Sea weren't included. The other problem is that, as Richard stated, except for Tropic Marine none of them provide batch numbers.

Who's to say the sample that is tested is typical or not? What is the average value for calcium in Oceanic? 450? 525? or 600? I have seen data for all three. Lack of consistency is certainly an issue.

What I think is that it just comes down to personal preference and seat of the pants type experience in observing how your aquariums do with different salts. Ideally I would be living on an island somewhere with a pump about 100 feet offshore pumping water through my tanks. Then I wouldn't have to worry about it. Well... except for pollution and agricultural runoff. OK, so lets say I own and the island and its a 1000 miles from anyone else. I can dream can't I? But then why would I want an aquarium, all I would need is a mask and snorkel. See what happens when you get me thinking about stuff like this?

[Polkster13]

I have often wondered what Sea World uses for their big tanks (the Orca tanks in particular) in SA. I believe all of the other parks are near enough to the ocean that they could just use NSW. Does anyone know what SW in SA uses? Do they truck NSW in or do they make their own?

[JimD]

They make their own salt, starting with raw non-iodine salt and add the components individualy to their own specifications. When I was behind the sceens, I was able to checkout their salt mixing area, salt bags piled to the ceiling, Magnesium, Calcium, all the necessary stuff. If anyones interested, maybe Ill contact my friend over there and see if he'd supply me with a complete list of ingredients and proportions, that'd be kind of interesting.

[dow]

Yeah that would be interesting, Jim.

Just out of curiosity, with all this talk about salt mixes, does anybody know how Instant Ocean compares with the others? I picked up a bucket of it at CB weekend before last when I took my son up there to trade in his ciclids.

[Ram_Puppy]

OK, just want to make clear, I have not observed any 'salt mix related problems' in my tank, I will freely admit that My Scads of problems lately came from a tank that was way to friggin hot, and then a tank that was just a little to hot. (thankfully, now totally under control.) The only thing I have personally EVER observed with oceanic that made me raise an eyebrow, was leaving a bucket of mixed water sitting for a week and a half or 2 weeks or so, and it turned a tea color, I have not as yet thrown it out (but plan too) if anyone want's to test it, I am not going to mess with it. (BTW, this bucket is an oceanic salt bucket and has never been used for anything but mixing new salt (and holding what came in it.) Anyhow, I have yet to see a concrete reason to move away from Oceanic, however, I think the evidence that there was a bad batch floating around out there is pretty strong (just type oceanic in a search on reef central) it's simply too much to be a coincidence, and when it happens in a bucket, it is not your husbandry practices. :|

So, I have about 150 gallons of mix left, I plan on using it in the 110, and giving away the rest to a buddy who uses oceanic. When the 115 goes up, I am going with Tropic Marin, the way I see it, Using Oceanic is like playing Russian Roullette (the gun has one bullet and 500 chambers though! :) ) I am not nearly as experienced as Tim and Richard and quite a few others, I suck at chemistry but I think I have a pretty good idea in most other areas, you could say I am book smart and still gaining practical experience... that being said, I just want to eliminate a potential headache before it even starts in this new tank, I work 60+ hours a week and am up for over 24 hours twice a week, I want to relax and enjoy my tank when I come home, so I am willing to spend a little more on what I percieve to be a higher quality salt.

It may be, and probably is, that I would have no problems what so ever with my new tank if I used Oceanic, I think it is entirely possible that when your job only consumes about 10 to 15% of your time while your at work, that you (Me) have entirely to much time to surf reef central, MAAST, and any other number of sites... I read WAY to much...


Dow, I think most people here would equate Instant Ocean to the venerable Chevy Pickup. no bells and whistles, but it's engine is good for 200K miles, and won't ever let you down.

[Dozer]

I know this is kind of old but wanted to throw in my 2 cents here. I am really really happy with Oceanic, so there's another big thumbs up vote for this salt!

I also will say that I too think there was a "bad batch" or some such problem at one point last year. This in and of itself doesn't bother me that much- one because I don't think it was anything really dangerous, and two because it was still kind of new on the market and these things happen when you're mass producing something. The one thing that did bother me was how it was handled. I personally spoke with 3 different people at three different local Austin area stores on the same day who- to one degree or another- indicated there was some kind of problem with a current batch of Oceanic salt, and that Oceanic themselves in some way or another confirmed this. However, when I posted something about this (those among you with even less of a life than mine can go search for that old thread) folks on here started getting understandably upset that I was using words like "recall", "problem", and so forth without any hard facts to back them up. So, I called the stores back over the next few days and each one of them really backpedaled this time- when before they were very open about saying there was some kind of problem. This bugged me because I not only felt stupid, but wondered if the LFS folks were all just being sloppy, or if someone from Oceanic had a talk with the retailers. Either one was annoying to me because I just felt I couldn't get a straight answer.

Anyway, after that mini-rant there, I guess my point is just to say that although that incident bugged me ( and to this day I think there was likely a minor problem with a batch somewhere along the line that nobody wanted to admit to) I still really really like the salt and can't imagine switching anytime soon. For the same reasons Tim mentioned- it dissolves really well, and I just add superbuffer to it, mix it around and it's ready to go.

[aquadoc]

I have used oceanic before, and yes it is good.
Butt I switch to Red Sea salt.
I like this salt better because I have noticed that the polyps extend the most, espeacialy my sps's, and anemones. The levels of the sa;t are tolerable too.

[Tim Marvin]

IO is the gold standard. This salt is fine, and has been around since I started keeping reefs 18 years ago. I'm not sure when it started but beleive me the salt has stood the test of time. You'll need to add a calcium additive to it to keep up a reef though.

[StephenA]

was leaving a bucket of mixed water sitting for a week and a half or 2 weeks or so, and it turned a tea color

I"ve kept it in my mix tank for up to 4 weeks. It does leave tea colored deposits in the bottom of the trash can.

[adamRS80]

Marine Environment has been working great for me. I just wish I knew a place that sold it here in San Antonio