Table Salt OK For Marine Aquarium?

[ScatMan]

I fully understand your point. What I'm saying is why not supply the needed elements via both a good diet as well as an "element" rich solution?

i guess you can do whatever you feel comfortable doing. i'm just sharing the information that i found: it's doesn't seem necessary to add the trace elements to the water in order to keep healthy fish. some people wear a belt and suspenders, some people like to save money, some people don't like change and some people will pay extra for convenience.

I think that Aristotle said something like "Nature does nothing uselessly".

i don't know the context of that statement, but i doubt he was talking about fish, lol! nature may or may not do things uselessly, but people certainly do.

Those trace elements found in sea water have some importance to our fish. Even if we don't fully understand how.

you can't make an honest judgement like that if you can't explain it. correlation is not causation. to say for certain that the trace elements from water are indeed necessary to fish, it has to be tested and proven. i have seen evidence to suggest otherwise.

i'll say this though: it certainly won't hurt the fish, your wallet is a different story.

And even if you are right, and diy brews are better, I still would feel better erring on the side of caution until I know for certain what chemicals are and aren't important.

 

[Wiggles92]

It's a pretty simple concept: Commercial marine salt is preferred over table salt because of the health benefits that Oddball noted, but a comparable homebrew marine salt is preferable because it's more economic but takes a little more knowledge to prepare. I'm not seeing why we continue to argue about this topic when that's all it boils down to in the end.

 

[BigCountry]

It's a pretty simple concept: Commercial marine salt is preferred over table salt because of the health benefits that Oddball noted, but a comparable homebrew marine salt is preferable because it's more economic but takes a little more knowledge to prepare. I'm not seeing why we continue to argue about this topic when that's all it boils down to in the end.

X2

You can make your own marine salt. But hell it's so cheap to buy what's the point....

 

[ScatMan]

It's a pretty simple concept: Commercial marine salt is preferred over table salt because of the health benefits that Oddball noted, but a comparable homebrew marine salt is preferable because it's more economic but takes a little more knowledge to prepare. I'm not seeing why we continue to argue about this topic when that's all it boils down to in the end.

who's arguing? we're having a peaceful conversation (for the most part). we're weighing the pros and cons of a home brew vs commercial salt. no big deal, right?

X2

You can make your own marine salt. But hell it's so cheap to buy what's the point....

it's 5X cheaper to make your own salt, that's the point.

if you have a lot of water to change the price can add up quickly. if you have the extra scratch to buy the commercial stuff, do it, but i'm sure there are some people that would rather spend their money on other things. it's a personal preference i guess.

 

[BigCountry]

Why are you changing a lot of water?

Heavy water changes only band-aid the problem....you need to find the root.

The only way I guess you can justify making your own salt is if your starting a large tank from scratch and filling it with RO/DI water and then salt. It would have to be a LARGE tank though for me to even consider the hassle of it...talking 300+ gallons.

 

[ScatMan]

i don't have a salt tank to change water. people change water to remove dissolved pollutants like nitrates and pheromones that can't be filtered out or are too impractical to remove otherwise. i thought most people do water changes, am i wrong? also, doing water changes allows you to do things you couldn't do in closed system, like stock more fish.

i keep freshwater fish and replace 50%-75% of the water weekly.

 

[BigCountry]

Yeah freshwater your only stock is fish, and more than likely lots of them. So water changes are part of that. And that is for reasons outside of nitrates and dissolved pollutants. 50-75% water weekly? I ran a 75g fresh and never changed that much water on a weekly basis. That's a lot!

For corals you should not be changing large amounts of water. You should find the root of your problem and fix it correctly.

You can remove nitrates and pheromones via things like refuges growing macroalgae like chaeto etc.

 

[ScatMan]

Yeah freshwater your only stock is fish, and more than likely lots of them. So water changes are part of that. And that is for reasons outside of nitrates and dissolved pollutants. 50-75% water weekly? I ran a 75g fresh and never changed that much water on a weekly basis. That's a lot!

it's not a lot for my tanks. they're stocked well and that's how much water i need to replace in order to maintain 30ppm nitrates average. there are more extreme folks out there that do 100% daily, i could actually benefit from changing more than that but i've yet to have any problems at these levels.

For corals you should not be changing large amounts of water. You should find the root of your problem and fix it correctly.

we're talking about a "fish only" tank here, as per my op.

why is not changing water a goal? is running/maintaining a refuge, denitrator, etc. more cost effective than changing water at $0.05 per gallon and sourcing your own salt? is it easier, or simply more fun?

You can remove nitrates and pheromones via things like refuges growing macroalgae like chaeto etc.

i'll have to take your word on that, i do know that you can also do the same with a water change. they say there's more than one way to skin a cat, lol. refuges and growing macroalgae is not practical (or less practical) for certain setups, as i understand it. do most people do water changes? <-- that wasn't rhetorical, i'm genuinely curious, everyone i've ever talked salt with cried about the price of water changes so i assumed they all change their water.

 

[Kevin8888]

SO back to the topic of the tread that has been beaten to death, you can make your own salt, using the major components of sea water, as far as I've been told and from what i've read this is fine for Fish Only systems. Infact I'm pretty sure a number of shark/ray keepers on the forum do this. It is unlikely that ingestion of sea water plays a major role in the absorbtion of trace elements for fish, even if it did, they could more then likely gain all they need from their food, assuming a varried diet. Trace elements, are called TRACE because they are rare, and are used in tiny ammounts by fish/corals, more then likely most of the traces absorbed are excreted as wastes.

As for water changes... I have set up both fresh and salt systems that never required any water changes, and maintained 0 ammonia/nitrite/nitrate/phosphates... And I have never done more then a 10% waterchange. I did this through a combination of larger volume tanks, large "Algea scrubbers", dosing "traces" to replaice whats used by corals, and medium to light stocking fish wise (generally coral dominant tanks). Algae scrubbers can be made to fit almost any system, making it a better choice then a fuge, and when set up/maintained correctly, they are far more efficient then a fuge at removing the wastes.

 

[ScatMan]

SO back to the topic of the tread that has been beaten to death, you can make your own salt, using the major components of sea water, as far as I've been told and from what i've read this is fine for Fish Only systems. Infact I'm pretty sure a number of shark/ray keepers on the forum do this. It is unlikely that ingestion of sea water plays a major role in the absorbtion of trace elements for fish, even if it did, they could more then likely gain all they need from their food, assuming a varried diet. Trace elements, are called TRACE because they are rare, and are used in tiny ammounts by fish/corals, more then likely most of the traces absorbed are excreted as wastes.

lol, that's the conclusion i came to so far too.

As for water changes... I have set up both fresh and salt systems that never required any water changes, and maintained 0 ammonia/nitrite/nitrate/phosphates... And I have never done more then a 10% waterchange. I did this through a combination of larger volume tanks, large "Algea scrubbers", dosing "traces" to replaice whats used by corals, and medium to light stocking fish wise (generally coral dominant tanks). Algae scrubbers can be made to fit almost any system, making it a better choice then a fuge, and when set up/maintained correctly, they are far more efficient then a fuge at removing the wastes.

sounds like you made some pretty sweet setups! were your 10% water changes during the tank cycle or was there some other reason you did them? in other words; did you do 10% changes as maintenance of just to get the tanks stable in the beginning?

semi-unrelated side note: i don't know about saltwater fish but people trying to quickly grow out some freshwater fish do huge water changes to make them grow faster. some fish are known to excrete pheromones that inhibit their growth. don't know if that's true for salt.