Catalina Water

[sailguy28]

Everytime I go to my LFS I see this 5 gallon jug of natural seawater from Catalina Water Company:

http://www.catalinawater.com/

I've polled some other groups about this and comments seem to be split, some love it some wouldn't touch it with a 10' barge pole. Does anyone here have experiance with it? since my tank is so small it's a viable option and after reading about how bad our salt mixes are it's got me thinking.

[Salty Sam]

I dont agree with salt mixes being bad, some of the largest and nicest public aquariums are using synthetic salt mixes as well as many hobbist with awesome reef tanks around the world.

I do believe some salts are better than others and Eric Borneman with the Houston Marine Club have done some extensive testing of most all the salts out there. Search for this study...good reading.

I also have heard good and bad with the prepared saltwater mixes.

[sailguy28]

That's a great study but I can't find the final results. Do you have a link?

[Myrphie]

I agree that a lot of the buzz lately about how awful our mixes are should be taken with a grain of, well, salt. Sam's right, many large public aquariums use the exact same salt we use in our own tanks. Here is a shot of pallets of Instant Ocean used by the Georgia Aquarium.

http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l200/myrphie/georgia-aquarium-8.jpg

While I'm sure our mixes could always be better, a lot of people have had incredible success with them.

[Salty Sam]

sailguy, I dont know if the final results have been published yet....I think they stepped on some of the companies toes. I would go to the Houston Marine Club and post a tread about the results and maybe on Reef Central.

[sailguy28]

I wouldn't be surprised, it's been a long time now. I'll see what I can dig up......

On the rest, I know the mixes we use work. Mostly I'm wondering if natural sea water might be slightly better. It sure would make water changes in a Nano a little bit quicker.

[sailguy28]

I posted yesterday at MARSH and here's the answer:

http://www.o-r-c-a.com/src/speakers.php

[Salty Sam]

Good find.....everyone is waiting since this is one of the most knowledgeable guys out there....awesome speaker.