Ocean Salt or Reef Salt????

[MushingJeeper]

So I finally have all the proper equipment needed to start my mini-reef tank as soon as I get this last order in the mail. I had purchased the normal Instant Ocean Marine Salt for the tank. But since I want to do a reef tank, with coral and all the like. Should I take the IO back and get IO Reef Salt? Or can I just purchase a bag of Reef Salt and use that when making my water changes? Thanks a bunch for the assistance!

[CapitalO]

the standard IO will work fine. The reef salt just has elevated levels of calcium, strontium and magnesium (used by hard corals. standard IO has enough of these elements as well and should work fine; I would recommend dosing nonetheless to achieve elevated levels.

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I use Instant Ocean, and I boost the calcium and magnesium in it with Dowflake and MAG flake from Home Depot.

[ralphie16]

Originally posted by Randy Holmes-Farley
I boost the calcium and magnesium in it with Dowflake and MAG flake from Home Depot.

Would you kindly explain how you dose these two products?

Thanks!

[deepblueat2814]

I have been using IO for the past 3 years and dose with Kalk without any issues.

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I use Instant Ocean (which I think may be a better mix in some respects than Reef Crystals), and then I boost the calcium by 70 ppm with Dowflake and magnesium by 150 ppm with MAG flake (the magnesium boosts it above normal, but is used to offset calcification loses in the tank).

This calculator shows how much to use for any size tank:

Reef chemicals calculator
http://home.comcast.net/~jdieck1/chem_calc3.html