Ahh the eternal quest for the perfect salt. I dont go chasing after rainbows on this one. I just use one mix reefcrystals. and I have had some pretty amazing tanks off them. mostly IMO its more about doing enough waterchanges to let your salt do its best. the best alt in the world wont do you any gfood if you only do a 20% waterchange once every 3 months. for a couple reasons.
(note these are my opinions here) the reasons being
1 infrequent waterchanges allow trace elements to be depleted low enough that partial water changes cant replenish them to original levels
2 infrequent waterchanges allow build up of the chemical by products from our corals, such as terpenoid compounds that are harmfull to other coral, to levels where infrequent waterchanges cant get them below toxic levels. I have seen this in tanks with massive leathers and low waterchanges where only leathers will survive in the tank. along with the build up of shed nematocyst from corals and anemone.
3 infrequent waterchanges allow detritus to build up that isnt removed by other means leading to possible septic situations. (part of good sand bed maintinence is stirring the shallow portion to kick up detritus and remmoving some of it through the waterchange) along with bvlowing the detritus out of your live rock removing the reprocessed worm poo and pod poo.
some people really rely on their salts for their dosing of certain things like cal alk and mag they also test for these and know what they need for those items from their salt and mix thair salt accordingly. I havent gone that far. I simply dont think it matters enough to me as long as I do frequent large waterchanges. frequrent meaning at least once every 2 weeks large being over 30% whenever possible. unfortunately I am only currently set up to do 25% waterchanges. I will be set up for 50% as soon as I can set it up. because I like my 50% waterchages.
now if you knew that youir tank consumed x amount of calcium x amount of mag and x amount of alk per week it might be worth while to tailor a salt that with a 25 or 30% waterchange brings them back to target levels. its just too much work for me when I know witha large water change I can bring it back up anyhow.
pardon all my typo's I'm too lazy to fix them all and I cant type for crap today.
