One other Option

[mlawson]

Dr. Shimek,
In researching recipes for salt I noticed something at a website from Scotland I believe. The company is Dryden Aqua and they sell salt for lobster tanks in restaurants and such. They claim that it is pure chemical form and does not include any caking agents or other toxins (metals). They go as far as showing the breakdown by concentration the contents that they include in their 16kg bag of mix. The one thing that troubles me is the "trace elements" concentration seems to be high but I am looking to see what you feel about it. The website is www.drydenaqua.com and some navigation is required. Is this a possible source of better salt?
Marc

[rshimek]

Hi,

I wasn't able to find the product you mentioned, but I would steer away from anything with trace elements that are any value above "trace."

[mlawson]

this is the exact address for that salt mix page.
http://www.drydenaqua.com/chemicals/salt/artifici.html

[mlawson]

There is no l just htm on the end and the g/kg concentration on the trace elements is 0.633 or 0.1% of the weight.

[rshimek]

Hi,

Trace metals at 0.1% would likely be too high.

:D

[dave750gixer]

I had a look at the site and am confused. They seem to be listing their product as containing 1% by weight of bicarbonate and trace elements. They also list the content of seawater as 0.1% trace elements in total. Not too helpful really. There is no indication as to how much of the 1% is bicarbonate and therefore how much is everything else. The seawater listing also does not appear to be a list of their product made up but appears to be a sample of NSW. I could be mistaken though.

The confusing bit which Ron didnt pick up on though is that by trace they do not mean trace metals. They appear to be using the word trace to mean everything not already listed. This is reasonably standard usage. It isnt all going to be metals though, since they list ions rather than elements it could be phosphate, nitrate etc as well as any element not listed, not all of which we would be worried about.

The short answer is that this stuff could be very good there just isnt enough information on the site to tell. It could contain anything from 0.00000001% total metals such as Cu, Zn, Hg, As,Sb etc all the way up to 0.999% copper and anything in between. I suppose you could always ask them for more info

[simonh]

I don't see anything on the webpage they present saying that the data refers to the chemical makeup of their artifical seasalt product. The pie chart /table is simply titled 'Constiuents of Seawater'.