Coralife Salt Experience?

[masterbuilder]

I have been using Tropic Marin (not pro) for almost 2 years now and until recently have been quite happy. My latest box has been testing VERY low in CA, 285-300 ppm at 1.025-1.026. The ALK is nothing to write home about either. I thought it may be a bad test kit so I used it as excuse to send in a sample to AWT for testing. Their test confirmed my mine. I even bought a new box and it also test low, although not quite as bad. I have taken to dosing a two-part to keep the levels up but I don’t want to dose and to raise it that much takes an incredible amount of chemical.

 

So.......

 

I have been thinking of changing salt. The tests that AWT provided makes Coralife look pretty good. I cant put my faith in just one test though.

 

I am looking for feedback from users of Coralife or anyone that has some experience with it...good or bad. I am not doing anything yet, I will see what others think.

 

Thanks Reefers,

Mark

[tinyreef]

i'd used coralife (almost exclusively) for about 8-years at one point. i felt it was pretty good during my stint of time with it. however, i did not use it on a weekly basis for most of that time (sometimes i went many months between waterchanges). but i think overall it was fine to use for reefs. i wouldn't put it in the category of Reef Crystals, TM, or Oceanic in ca/alk support though. it's overkill for FO/FOWLR, IO is adequate for those categories.

 

i did prefer the crystal size of it over TM and oceanic though. the bucket/bags were easier to handle. and its pricing usually was significantly better than those three too (although oceanic didn't really even exist at that period).

 

but eventually i came across a bad batch. that particular batch was fine for fish-only or fowlr though (which i had one set up at the time) but just not pure enough(?) or too contaminated(?) for reefing. so i took that opportunity to switch to (yet) another brand i had used/tested previously that i was very happy with (plus i personally liked the mfg). i've been using that brand for the past three years.

 

i'm not going to bash coralife for one bad batch that i came across though. it's an adequate/good salt still imo. i do think it's still better than IO but not as good as RC (the main difference there simply being the ca/alk content though). 'purity'/quality also weighs into my opinion there.

 

*i have not read the AWT study (whatever that is) nor have i thoroughly read borneman's recent study, so this is strictly from personal experience/opinion. hth

[roxy25]

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.p...hreadid=1287118

 

I found this thread helpful right now Im using RS pro coral and I have gotten some good results. I have a bag of oceanpure I will try . I had a hard time with low MG and the RS pro got my mg steady from 950 to 1300. The coralife looks good if you had lots of SPS.

 

When I had my tank filled with sps I had at least 25ppm of CA gone in one day I had a clam also and lots of coraline algae