Making Your Own Saltwater - Additives and Process - What's yours?

[TheCanuck]

Hey Everyone!

First and foremost, we all know the purple bucket IO is the BEST salt hands down. The only reason why someone would use another bucket is because they don't know better or they are lazy.

I am falling into the lazy bucket pun intended. I used Reef Crystals

HOWEVER

I'd like to move to the purple bucket. I am highly curious of everyone that currently uses the Purple IO bucket... WHAT IS YOUR PROTOCOL?

Do you just ad A/B to it and call it a day? Are you adding Kalk?

I am wondering since the ALK is already so high would is there anyone that just adds a single additive to their mix? Like Brightwell Liquid Reef, that has no ALK in it?

Whats is your desired numbers? and how do you get there while using the purple bucket before you pour water into the tank.

Anyones thoughts and more specifically protocols would be appreciated.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

I just do a regular water change, and I've got all for reef on a doser. I like my alk at 8.5.

A 10% water change doesn't have huge impact to the 90% of the water. And my tank consumes 1.5 of alk per day, so I'm always struggling to maintain it.

 

[Floyd-]

I do a 20% water change a week (5 gallons on a 25 gallon tank) with normal IO. I just mix and swap the 5 gallons. I only dose AFR but I never add anything into the water being made for the water change. I figured standard IO is good enough for the Georgia Aquarium its good enough for me.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Hey Everyone!

First and foremost, we all know the purple bucket IO is the BEST salt hands down. The only reason why someone would use another bucket is because they don't know better or they are lazy.

I am falling into the lazy bucket pun intended. I used Reef Crystals

HOWEVER

I'd like to move to the purple bucket. I am highly curious of everyone that currently uses the Purple IO bucket... WHAT IS YOUR PROTOCOL?

Do you just ad A/B to it and call it a day? Are you adding Kalk?

I am wondering since the ALK is already so high would is there anyone that just adds a single additive to their mix? Like Brightwell Liquid Reef, that has no ALK in it?

Whats is your desired numbers? and how do you get there while using the purple bucket before you pour water into the tank.

Anyones thoughts and more specifically protocols would be appreciated.

Long ago I added calcium and magnesium to IO since the values were low. As they raised the values, I dropped the calcium and just added magnesium. In todays version of IO, I’d add less or no magnesium, depending on how I added alk and calcium.

I used it for 1% daily automatic water changes.

 

[TheCanuck]

Looks like everyone is just on the auto dosing train. I’m going to order an auto doser.