instant ocean vs aquarium salt

[maaltan]

ok, now im confused.

i have been reading that for brackish water systems you should use instant ocean like products since it has a more natural combination of salts. likewise you are supposed to use aquarium salt to treat diseases in freshwater systems because of some of the other minerals present in sea water might cause problems with fresh water.

Aquarium salt is supposed to be sodium chloride or simple uniodized table salt.

i was looking at one of the boxes of aquarum salt at walmart today and it claims it is made from evaporated sea water. this makes it sound like the equivelant to instant ocean. is this the case or just yet another example of marketing speak to make one or the other's products sound more/less attractive

hmmm very confused.

 

[Dwarfnut]

They are two very distinct products. Aquarium salt is just salt, Sodium chloride, nothing else. It ususlly comes in larger crystals that dissolve rapidly in water.

Instant ocean have salt in it as a main ingredient, but also contains a lot of trace element stuff only salt-water fish need.

Long ago I had the same question, only I had been treating some sick fish with the instant ocean. All the fish died... I think it was because I was using the wrong product. Several local fish experts agreed... I now buy the plain aqaurium salt in bulk from a lfs and it works great.

BC

 

[kayla]

ok, now im confused.

i have been reading that for brackish water systems you should use instant ocean like products since it has a more natural combination of salts. likewise you are supposed to use aquarium salt to treat diseases in freshwater systems because of some of the other minerals present in sea water might cause problems with fresh water.

Aquarium salt is supposed to be sodium chloride or simple uniodized table salt.

i was looking at one of the boxes of aquarum salt at walmart today and it claims it is made from evaporated sea water. this makes it sound like the equivelant to instant ocean. is this the case or just yet another example of marketing speak to make one or the other's products sound more/less attractive

hmmm very confused.

Okay, good, I'm not the only one who wondered about that too.

 

[TKOS]

There probably are a few more things in the "aquarium salt" but it is the same as buying "sea salt" from the grocery store that you put on food. It won't contain buffers and when the process of drying is done it changes the way the chemicals that make up the sea salt work, so they don't necessarily recombine to form true marine conditons.

 

[maaltan]

There probably are a few more things in the "aquarium salt" but it is the same as buying "sea salt" from the grocery store that you put on food. It won't contain buffers and when the process of drying is done it changes the way the chemicals that make up the sea salt work, so they don't necessarily recombine to form true marine conditons.

HMM .. maybe the difference is one is dried surface water and the other is dried deep water.

Although I think instant ocean might be synthezised( mixed, built, ie synthetic)

maybe some of the chemicals (buffers etc) are damaged by drying and therefore must be added back in. Ahh i bet thats it. You can remove KH (buffering) by boiling the water. This is probably how the sea water is dried. You will get sodium, calcium and other salts but the carbonates would have been boiled off as CO2 and/or converted to other organic compounds

Ironic really. To get perfectly natural sea water in a tank it must be constructed by man.

It makes sense now assuming my assumptions are assumed correct. or something like that.

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edit:

A sub question, to help clarify stuff. For those of you who use instant ocean. Does it disolve easily and cleanly like regular salt? Does it leave a whitish sediment that has to sit for a while to dissolve properly? does it require/do any other different stuff i didn't mention here?

 

[OrionGirl]

Instant ocean dissolves fairly rapidly-- a bit of agitation may be required, but I've never had a problem with any precipitate. If you are seeing some, you may want to check to make sure you're not losing calcium due to alkalinity issues.

And to confirm--yes, evaporated sea salt does not hydrate to re-form seawater. The evaporation results in chemical changes that will not revert back to solution in water.