New Salt Mix Data?

[gtrestoration]

I'm glad at least someone is spending some time, money and effort to produce some date on salt mixes. Because I know where the data is comming from and because of the questions on the methods being brought up by Randy and others I might be able to make a better decision on my choice of salt.
Until a large group of unbiased hobbyists come forward with large sums of money to produce these papers this is all we have to work with.

BTW, the proper way to implement the Jaubert plenum system is over a deep bed of CRUSHED CORAL.

That's what I though also when I ran one 8 years ago. I don't think sugar sized sand was popular then.

SteveU

[bertoni]

Ninong, I didn't mean to say that you were, nor am I, really, I'm just pointing out that money can corrupt. I think we all have cases in mind.

It's funny, having lost two relatives to smoking, I was just thinking about that example this morning. My grandfather was still quoting the tobacco industry propaganda up to a month or two before the lung cancer killed him.

[JakStat]

Originally posted by bertoni

... I might be a bit unfair here, but I wouldn't at all be surprised if Ninong has a point and there's false data, etc, in the paper. I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't any outright falsification, either, though.

I think it pays to be very cynical when reading research papers from parties with financial interest in the outcome. ...

I for one do think this is a bit out of line.

If there is a motivation behind a study, it is irrelevant if the data are collected accurately. An experiment designed to yield a specific result is obvious to a trained scientist, and the savvy will incorporate this impression when evaluating the ultimate conclusions. This is not unethical; at worst, it is poor science, and it sticks out like a sore thumb.

In my field I frequently see studies done by scientists employed by drug companies. Believe it or not, sometimes they are negative on their own product. On the other hand, when a study is positively biased and the experiments are poor, they usually end up in a crappy journal where no one takes them seriously anyhow, if they get read at all. My point is that motivation is irrelevant to the interpretation of data. It's just that one must be able to sort out the good data from the bad data.

Knowing this, if you can't sort it out, get an interpretation from a fluent party before "objectively" considering motivations.

I won't even dignify any comments about falsification.

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

In my field I frequently see studies done by scientists employed by drug companies.......

On the other hand, when a study is positively biased and the experiments are poor, they usually end up in a crappy journal where no one takes them seriously anyhow, if they get read at all.

I hope none were mine.

[Ninong]

Originally posted by Randy Holmes-Farley
I hope none were mine.

Maybe he read some of Pfizer's Vioxx studies?

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Do you believe that Merck published misleading studies? I'm sure there will be lawsuits intended to find that out, but just because something is later found to have a problem doesn't necessarily mean that Merck knew about the problem in advance.

[Ninong]

Originally posted by Randy Holmes-Farley
Do you believe that Merck published misleading studies? I'm sure there will be lawsuits intended to find that out, but just because something is later found to have a problem doesn't necessarily mean that Merck knew about the problem in advance.

Sorry, I meant to say Merck.

I have no idea what they knew "in advance" but they certainly knew what was going on long before they & the FDA took any action.

Johns-Manville knew a lot about the carcinogenic effects of asbestos fibres long before the public at large yet they did nothing. They had nurses at every plant doing regular annual exams and x-rays. They considered it pretty much the same as coal miners working in coal mines -- unavoidable hazards of the job.

The tobacco companies knew about the health hazards of tobacco long before the government finally cracked down on them yet they continued to seek better ways to market their products, even doing focus groups with 5-year-olds to test their brand awareness.

Ford Motor Company knew about the problems with the Pinto's gas tanks exploding but Henry Ford II refused to do anything about them because of the money. Either that or Lee Iacocca is lying. Firestone knew about their Firestone 500 tires exploding long before the recall. (Both of these things happened more than 30 years ago in case you were wondering.)

Do you believe that misleading studies have never been published? Do you believe that all expert witnesses testify to the best of their knowledge or do you accept that many of them testify in a way that will guarantee future huge fees?

[JakStat]

Originally posted by Ninong

Do you believe that misleading studies have never been published? Do you believe that all expert witnesses testify to the best of their knowledge or do you accept that many of them testify in a way that will guarantee future huge fees?

I'm sorry, I thought the argument wasn't whether misleading studies heve ever been produced, but whether this one was misleading. I'm not sure I understand the relevance of the cases you mentioned to this one. Your premises do not have the certainty of physics; just because someone in the past mislead in a study does not mean all will mislead in the future.

A biased study with accurate data can still be valuable. I think the point I'm arguing is lost on the non-scientists. You are not differentiating between an honest study with obvious and compensatable bias, and outright falsification/prevarication; I am. In effect you are treating truth and falsehood as equal, but they are not.

(BTW, Merck's data on Vioxx included the cardiac risk numbers! They submited this to the FDA and it still got approved! The FDA reviewed the data and found the benfits outweighed the risks. Although their clinical trials were neither biased against the cardiac phenomena or falsified, they will probably still get sued out of existence.)

But back to this topic:

Just recently are truly scientific evaluations being performed to shed some light on the underlying molecular relationships at work in our aquaria. I think it is astounding that it took so long for this to occur, but I realize the infrastructure just isn't there. However, at Marineland there is. Here we have a company that sells mostly aquarium products actually performing true R&D. I find this to be not only jaw-dropping (if people had any idea what it costs to set up a lab you would understand), but a borderline community service. After all, there will be new data for others to evaluate and verify. As a scientist I appreciate another entity dropping hundreds of thousands of dollars in initial startup and continuing hundreds of thousands of dollars, ultimately in the millions, to contribute to the effort of data collection. Maybe others think Marineland is the financial equivalent of Pfizer or Merck, but I doubt they are. This is probably a huge financial expenditure for them which can just as easily be directed into profits and bonuses for top officers; but instead they reinvest.

Dr. Hovanec has released only part one of his study. I think I will wait to read the rest before I conclude that the data are to be ignored simply because one product's manufacturer conducted the study. I for one prefer hard numbers that can be verified or disproved to the stone-age anecdotal purgatory that current reefkeeping protocols exist in.

[JakStat]

Originally posted by Randy Holmes-Farley


I hope none were mine.

Actually, my lab in grad school (about 10 years ago) used to get cytokines from Genzyme (I'm not sure if Genzyme still provides catolog-type biological reagents).

Cytokines from Genzyme were always considered a superior product.

I certainly did my part in using up IL-3 and keeping it at the top of the "to order" list in lab!

[RGibson]

It could be that the motivation for Marineland who makes Instant Ocean sea salt to do the study is that thay are losing market share.

[Ninong]

Originally posted by Ninong
Sorry, but I wasn't trying to imply anything about "false data." I was questioning whether the methods used in the filtration study were designed to produce the desired result.

JakStat,

I guess you missed that, it was on the previous page.

You're right, this discussion is getting way off topic. My comment above had nothing to do with the study at hand, it was an observation of my impression of a previous study done by the same person. But at the time of that study Marineland was under different ownership. In fact, if I am not mistaken, their ownership has changed no less than three times in the past few years. They are presently owned by a venture capital company who purchased them a few months ago from the previous venture capital company.

There seems to have been a lot of consolidation lately in this business.

[Ninong]

Originally posted by RGibson
It could be that the motivation for Marineland who makes Instant Ocean sea salt to do the study is that thay are losing market share.

There are rumors to that effect but Marineland's sea urchin larvae survival study was supposedly begun well over a year ago according to statements made at the time by the person conducting the study and much has changed since then, including the introduction of new salt mixes by competitors and even a change in the ownership of Marineland.

As we know, Aquarium Systems (Instant Ocean & Reef Crystals) is part of Marineland, which is part of Aquaria, Inc., which was part of United Pet. United Pet recently changed hands and was acquired by United Industries of St. Louis, MO (June 2004). Central Garden & Pet (Oceanic, All-Glass, Island Aquariums, Kent Marine, etc.) was actually attempting to buy out United Pet when it was bought by United Industries in June. If Central Garden & Pet had ended up with United Pet instead of United Industries, then we would have had a whole slew of salt mixes owned by the same venture capital company.

[Ninong]

Originally posted by JakStat
I'm sorry, I thought the argument wasn't whether misleading studies heve ever been produced, but whether this one was misleading. ...just because someone in the past mislead in a study does not mean all will mislead in the future.

If a company (Marineland) has misled in the past, one might be more skeptical of their claims in the future.

Advertising copy for Instant Ocean salt mix has made claims about "No Phosphates -- Never Had, Never Will" and claims about no chelators. It could very well be that there are presently no phosphates and no chelators in Instant Ocean salt mix but they certainly added phosphate and EDTA in the past because their own publications listed 1.3 ppm PO4 and 0.06 ppm EDTA.

In this thread someone has reported that they admit that EDTA is added to Reef Crystals. As recently as a year or so ago I heard that they were refusing to identify the chelator in Reef Crystals. Some of the ad copy for another brand of salt mix that is produced by Aquarium Systems for a foreign company makes a point of saying that it "does not contain harmful EDTA."

They have made claims about the consistency and reliability of Instant Ocean and yet we have all read the reports of problems with extremely high alkalinity that were experienced by many hobbyists last year and verified by Aquarium Systems.

I found Dr. Hovanec's first article interesting and I am looking forward to the two remaining articles. I will continue to view all claims made by a company's own research department with caution.

[JakStat]

Originally posted by Ninong
There are rumors to that effect but Marineland's sea urchin larvae survival study was supposedly begun well over a year ago according to statements made at the time by the person conducting the study and much has changed since then, including the introduction of new salt mixes by competitors and even a change in the ownership of Marineland.

As we know, Aquarium Systems (Instant Ocean & Reef Crystals) is part of Marineland, which is part of Aquaria, Inc., which was part of United Pet. United Pet recently changed hands and was acquired by United Industries of St. Louis, MO (June 2004). Central Garden & Pet (Oceanic, All-Glass, Island Aquariums, Kent Marine, etc.) was actually attempting to buy out United Pet when it was bought by United Industries in June. If Central Garden & Pet had ended up with United Pet instead of United Industries, then we would have had a whole slew of salt mixes owned by the same venture capital company.

I'l reword my point yet again:

If the results of a study are accurate and reproducible, what difference does it make who does it?

[Ninong]

Originally posted by JakStat
I'l reword my point yet again:

If the results of a study are accurate and reproducible, what difference does it make who does it?

None but that doesn't say anything about the design of the study, does it?

[JakStat]

Originally posted by Ninong
None but that doesn't say anything about the design of the study, does it?

OMG... "None... but.."

Going around in circles...

As I stated earlier... design flaws and biases are obvious to the trained eye and the limitations are factored in when evaluating the ultimate conclusions.

If Scientist X measures [Cu] by mass spec and comes up with "x", what difference does it make whether he works for Marineland or not? If he's missing a desired control for a comparison test then his conclusions may be off, but the data is still valuable.

I think you're confusing data with conclusions. The"conclusions" section of a paper is typically what the layperson reads for the interpretation of data. What most people don't realize is that the "conclusions" section is opinion and conjecture. It is where the objective data becomes subjectively portrayed.

Just ignore any future hard data and just stick with "what works" and things that "I heard about". Can't go wrong.

[JakStat]

Once again, back on topic:

My previous post reminded me of something that struck me in Ron Shimek's ASW paper. Maybe I'm rehashing a point that has already been brought up.

After reading the data portion of the paper, I thought "OK, so Instant Ocean is the most biologically amenable". I came to this conclusion because the data showed that conditioned, mature Instant Ocean was the closest to NSW in urchin survival. I felt that the assay in general lacked this control for each brand sample. I assume that the organics and metabolites that accumulate in conditioned water are biologically relevant since NSW obviously has these components that fresh ASW does not. Additionally, all marine organisms have evolved and survived in water conditioned with organics and metabolites; again, ASW lacks these, and I thought his experiment showed the importance of these components.

However I was astounded that he dismissed this datum as an artifact, when I thought this was the most telling data point. I thought his conclusions were dissonant with his data because of this.

Just my humble opinion. Maybe I'm missing something.

[Ninong]

Originally posted by JakStat
I came to this conclusion because the data showed that conditioned, mature Instant Ocean was the closest to NSW in urchin survival.

Just my humble opinion. Maybe I'm missing something.

Are you referring to the sample from Hobbyist A? If so, it does not appear to be the closest to NSW in urchin survival according to Table 2: http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-0...ture/index.htm


Maybe I'm missing something?

[JakStat]

I should have said "mature, conditioned IO was closer to NSW for urchin survival than fresh IO" instead of "closest" of all. My memory of that paper was fuzzy since I read it months ago.

My bad.

I still think the conditioned water controls for each mix would have been interesting to have for comparison, for the biological reasons stated above. I'm also still surprised this data was dismissed as an artifact.

[Ninong]

Originally posted by JakStat
I should have said "mature, conditioned IO was closer to NSW for urchin survival than fresh IO" instead of "closest".

What about the "mature, conditioned IO sample" from Hobbyist B? It showed practically the same low rate of urchin survival as the fresh IO sample.

The data is what it is from the limited number of samples. That being said, it will be interesting if the results of Dr. Hovanec's urchin survival studies show significant improvement using one day old Instant Ocean samples. Obviously the manufacturer will be keen to show the safety of the 24-hr samples. It might be difficult to base your advertising on claims based on "mature, conditioned" saltwater.

[JakStat]

Hobbyist B used well water for constitution. Hobbyist A used RO/DI. There are variables present in well water which are absent in RO/DI water and this may be the difference. There may also be other differences between the tanks of the two hobbyists.

I think that ultimately these studies can only add limited knowledge to the chemistry of SW. There are so many variables that are presently unassayable, as well as local environmental variables. They used local California NSW as a control, but from what I've read there can be some variability of constituents between collection locales. This community can argue ad infinitum about which is "best", but the actual case is that whatever information we get is limited.

In my opinion, it is practically impossible to have controls for all the possible variables when comparing NSW (and any natural variations) with ASW mixes, particularly when there are many presently unidentified compounds present in NSW. Add into this experimental variability that there is a choice of assays available, which contribute information in different ways, i.e., chemical vs biological vs developmental; which is best? I'm not a marine biologist or a chemist, so I can't second-guess choice of assay. But I do know that all assays only reveal so much.

But like I said earlier, any information is good. A study with limited scope is preferable to no study at all.

As far as the conditioning thing goes, on an aside, some cells (X) I have grown in the past survive best in "conditioned" media, i.e. media in which other types of cells (Y) have first metabolized and grown. There are secreted factors in the media which aid the growth of cell X. There are synthetic ways of duplicating this environment, but none are as good as the natural method. I don't know if this analogy can extend to SW, but it seems like it could.

[jfinch]

Are you referring to the sample from Hobbyist A?... ect...

In the third part of Dr. Hovanec's soon to be published paper, he critiques Dr. Shimek's larval study, and addresses these concerns. It's been a few months since I heard the presentation (and I was more interested in the salt mix data), but I seem to recall that Tim took issue with the number of larval used per sample, number of adult female urchin used and the fact that the larva were not properly mixed before being split. That last concern resulting in skewed results because the offspring of one urchin had a greater mortality rate then the other urchin regardless of which water sample they were in. I hope I have remembered this correctly

[Ninong]

Originally posted by jfinch
That last concern resulting in skewed results because the offspring of one urchin had a greater mortality rate then the other urchin regardless of which water sample they were in.

That would certainly be a valid point and would be helpful in support of his company's position. I doubt they could get much mileage or comfort from the fact that sea urchins survive better in "mature, conditioned" saltwater -- not if you're out to prove that your product is perfectly safe to use one hour after mixing.

[JakStat]

Originally posted by Ninong
That would certainly be a valid point and would be helpful in support of his company's position. I doubt they could get much mileage or comfort from the fact that sea urchins survive better in "mature, conditioned" saltwater -- not if you're out to prove that your product is perfectly safe to use one hour after mixing.

I just can't think of any circumstance other than this experiment where anyone would put livestock into 100% freshly mixed saltwater. Maybe marine biologists in the lab or something. Even when setting up a tank, first sand and rock go in to condition the water and cycle it prior to the introduction of larger livestock....?

What purposes did you have in mind for this water? Like I said I'm not a marine biologist so maybe these salts are advertised for other uses than for aquaria, I just don't understand the above comment in the context of home aquaria. The above criterion seems unnaturally stringent to me.

[Ninong]

Originally posted by JakStat
I just can't think of any circumstance other than this experiment where anyone would put livestock into 100% freshly mixed saltwater. Maybe marine biologists in the lab or something. Even when setting up a tank, first sand and rock go in to condition the water and cycle it prior to the introduction of larger livestock....?

What purposes did you have in mind for this water? Like I said I'm not a marine biologist so maybe these salts are advertised for other uses than for aquaria, I just don't understand the above comment in the context of home aquaria. The above criterion seems unnaturally stringent to me.

I aerate my saltwater for at least 72 hours prior to using it for any purpose. I do not use a brand manufactured by Aquarium Systems but I do happen to have a bag of Reef Crystals in my closet. The manufacturer's mixing instructions printed on the back of the bag are as follows:

Mix Reef Crystals salt with ordinary dechlorinated water. Because water conditions at different locations vary tremendously, we recommend using a commercial dechlorinator (such as Aquarium Systems AmmEx) to completely neutralize any concentrations of chlorine and/or chloramine.

Stir vigorously to mix salt and water. Although the solution of Reef Crystals salt can be used immediately, we suggest aerating the water to reach oxygen/carbon dioxide equilibrium.

Use an accurate hydrometer, such as the SeaTest full range specific gravity meter, to adjust salinity. Recommended specific gravity range: 1.020 to 1.023 at 75 degrees F. If specific gravity is too low, add more Reef Crystals salt. If too high, add more dechlorinated water.

It may not be helpful to the manufacturer to publish test results that contradict their own instructions.

P.S. -- The freshly mixed saltwater used in Shimek's tests was aerated for 24 hours prior to use.