Salt & trace metals - Salt brands w/o trace metals?

K

Kevin Trotman

[I remember at MACNA last year I had a private conversation with one of the speakers that was pretty interesting. I'm not sure if anyone remembers Dr. Shimek's talk about the toxic levels of trace metals that can naturally occur in over the counter salt brands and fish food, but some of the graphs he showed were interesting--actually frightening really, the idea that some salt mixes have lethal levels of copper and lead. Later one of the speakers privately suggested to me that there are Marine-grade seawater mixes that really make for a spectacular reef. I finally followed up on it after almost a year, but the only one I found that might be such a beast is at this site:

www.aquacraft.net

Anyone else heard of this kind of thing? I probably would have forgotten it, but that poll about salt brands happened to remind me.]
 
[Kevin,

Dr Shimek's talk last year was depressing, and I told him that point blank. I had a conversation with another reefer about a month ago, and he pointed out that the good doctor was the big influence on DSBs a few years ago. Now that they are all beginning to suffer from "old tank syndrome", Ron's encouraging us to use different salt with lesser metal content. The DSBs are trapped full of crap and we can't stir them up or risk problems.

I think the salt Glenn is using is pretty good - Hawaiian Blend. And the new Bio-Assay stuff Shimek has been doing articles on, over on RC, has his thumbs-up.]
 
[Here's something interesting

Instant Ocean is the world's most widely used synthetic sea salt in the world. Its use in public aquariums and similar venues is widespread. The Wonders of Wildlife Museum in Springfield, Illinois utilized twenty-five 1-ton sacks of Instant Ocean in the creation of its 220,000-gallon ocean life aquarium and has been using the mix for years. The Columbus Zoo's Discovery Reef required 11,000 pounds of Instant Ocean. The Tennessee Aquarium has been an Instant Ocean devotee for more than 12 years. The list of other prominent long-term Instant Ocean users is an impressive one, including The Dallas World Aquarium, Minnesota's Underwater Adventure in the Mall of America, The Shark Reef at Las Vegas' Mandalay Bay Resort, and many others.]
 
[This whole topic depresses me... :very sad: I thought both Instant Ocean and Reef Crystals were the best choices out there from what I read when I first started in this hobby (a little over a year ago). Now I'm reading more about how they are not so good. I'm so confused.... I don't want to switch and then have some new report that the one I switched to has some deadly effect. I wish they would all just get together and make one salt that was good for the whole hobby. If they combined their efforts, they would probably come up with one heck of a salt!]
 
[here is an interesting article on aluminum. You buy pure salt then add phosgaurd, limewater or fishfood and add the toxic metals you didn't want.

http://216.239.37.104/search?....e=UTF-8

quote:
Was this an important issue for the samples analyzed for aluminum by Shimek? Is that why the samples all looked fairly similar in terms of aluminum concentration? Do any of those reported values represent real determinations, or simply background noise? I don’t know, but I am skeptical. Since I am not aware of any other measurements of aluminum in reef aquaria, I believe that we are left without knowing what the concentrations are, except that in the case of my aquarium at least, the concentration is ≤ 0.05 ppm.

Qoute:
In their study of artificial saltwater mixes, Atkinson and Bingman claimed that 8 different artificial salt mixes contained between 6 and 8 ppm aluminum (which they reported as 230-290 μmole/kg).24 Because the numbers are all so similar and so very much higher than my test (≤0.05 ppm for Instant Ocean) or those reported by Shimek (0.1 ppm for Instant Ocean), or the S-15 Report (0.006 ppm aluminum in Instant Ocean; similarly low for the other mixes tested),

Quote:
Foods are, of course, another potential source of aluminum. In a study of the amounts of different elements in certain foods,25 Shimek presented the results shown in Table 2. The values have also been normalized to show the amount of aluminum in the foods in relation to the number of calories provided. Clearly, if aluminum is of primary concern, brine shrimp (highlighted in red) should probably not be on the menu.

Quote:
Limewater (kalkwasser) is made by dissolving calcium oxide or calcium hydroxide in water. The calcium oxide that I use from the Mississippi Lime Company is food grade, but still has certain impurities. The typical analysis of this material shows it to contain 0.10 % aluminum. It is not obvious what form this takes but since aluminum is quite soluble at pH 12.4 (total solubility = 80 ppm at pH 12.4,27 if saturated limewater were made from CaO with 0.1% aluminum, it would contain 1 ppm aluminum) it is a reasonable hypothesis that it dissolves into the limewater and is delivered to the aquarium. If one were adding 2% of the aquarium volume in saturated limewater (0.0204 moles/L CaO) every day for a year, one would have added the equivalent of 8.3 ppm aluminum.


food for thought.]
 
[I agree Jose-don't rely on one or two articles... I read a lot at the time when I was starting, including large forums like ReefCentral. The majority went the way of Instant Ocean or Reef Crystals. I guess once I am close to finishing this salt mix, I will research again and see if I might want to switch. As far as Ron Shimek, I have heard varying reports on his 'authority' in the hobby. I'm not trying to bad-mouth him...I have never met him...I am just saying don't stake everything you do on what one so called 'authority' says. For all we know, there is some quiet hobbyist/scientist out there that has done far more tests and knows much more, but just hasn't published anything or made himself/herself known to the masses.

I guess I need to calm down and remember my new motto: Do what's best for your animals and continue to do things that seem to work for them. Everyone's aquarium is not the same and will require different things...What's good for one may not be good for all. I don't have a spawning sea urchin, so Ron's article may or may not be pertinant to my situation. (Excuse my sarcasm...)]
 
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