making your own salt mix.

acroholic · May 29, 2010

Has anyone here tried making their own salt mix? There are several recipes available online. I have not priced out the cost of chemicals, but wondered if it would be worthwhile? Here is a link to a Randy Holmes Farley article on Seawater that has an artificial seawater recipe in it.

acroholic · May 29, 2010

Recipe from the article. I believe you would only need to mix the chemicals in the following weight ratios. The amounts you use could, of course, be multiplied to make the smaller amounts easier to work with.
>
For those who are interested, the following artificial seawater recipe is taken from "Chemical Oceanography" by Frank Millero. It makes a recipe that matches 35 ppt seawater in terms of major ions, but does not try to match all minor and trace elements, most of which will be present as impurities in the major elements.

23.98 g sodium chloride
5.029 g magnesium chloride
4.01 g sodium sulfate
1.14 g calcium chloride0
.699 g potassium chloride
0.172 g sodium bicarbonate
0.100 g potassium bromide
0.0254 g boric acid
0.0143 g strontium chloride
0.0029 g sodium fluoride
Water to 1 kg total weight.
>

weaglereefer · May 29, 2010

1kg of water is what, like 1/3 of a gallon? So you'd need around 40kg of water to 1kg of Sodium Chloride. 40kg of water would come out to 88lbs, probalby around 11 gallons, conservatively (not an unusual size for a W/C for most of us, I try to do 10g a week). Buying the 30lb for $63 MgCl from BRS, that comes to around $4.60/kg.

Given that I get around 12 w/c from a bucket of Seachem Reef Salt, I would be paying more for the MgCl alone for a batch than buying from the ready mixed salt from the store.

I would think unless you're buying tremendous amounts of the chemicals needed, the costs won't weigh out. The reasons I could see for making your own is either precise control of what goes in the salt, or if you're using small enough amounts of salt that you hit pockets of chemicals in the mix (ex, low Mg some batches, etc). In the first case, you could just switch to Salinity and know exactly what's going in (you're probably doing very large water changes after all) and in the 2nd case, it wouldn't be cost effective.

acroholic · May 29, 2010

I'll use 5 gallon of water as an example. 5 gallons of water weighs about 19 kilograms (http://www.csgnetwork.com/h2oweightconv.html">http://www.csgnetwork.com/h2oweightconv.html</a>). 25 gallons weights about 96 kilograms. So from this if we multiply the weights of dry chemical needed for a 25 gallon WC:

weight per kilogram

23.98 g sodium chloride
5.029 g magnesium chloride
4.01 g sodium sulfate
1.14 g calcium chloride0
.699 g potassium chloride
0.172 g sodium bicarbonate
0.100 g potassium bromide
0.0254 g boric acid
0.0143 g strontium chloride
0.0029 g sodium fluoride

weight needed for 25 gallons of seawater mix (x 96 and rounded to a usable number).

2302 g sodium chloride/82 oz/5.13 lbs
483 g magnesium chloride/17.24 oz/1.07 lb
385 g sodium sulfate/13.74 oz/.86 lb
110 g calcium chloride/3.9 oz/.24 lb
67 g potassium chloride/2.4 oz
16.5 g sodium bicarbonate/.59 oz
9.6 g potassium bromide/.34 oz
2.44 g boric acid
1.37 g strontium chloride
0.28 g sodium fluoride

grouper therapy · May 29, 2010

Acroholic;516602 wrote: Has anyone here tried making their own salt mix? There are several recipes available online. I have not priced out the cost of chemicals, but wondered if it would be worthwhile? Here is a link to a Randy Holmes Farley article on Seawater that has an artificial seawater recipe in it.

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-11/rhf/index.php">http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-11/rhf/index.php</a>[/QUOTE]

You pick which ones you will investigate sources for and Iwill work on the others!

acroholic · May 29, 2010

working on it.

eric b · May 29, 2010

Pretty soon we will be DIY on everything!!! I like it...:lol2:

acroholic · May 29, 2010

OK here is what I found:

I divided the raw chemicals up into three types based on amount used: Bulk Use, Intermediate Use, and Minor use. Bulk use would require regular reordering because of the amounts used, Intermediate uses a good bit less than Bulk, but much more than Minor, and Minor use are the type where you buy once and you use so little at a time that reordering is very infrequent.

I'll then list sources, but not provide links out of respect to our Sponsors. The prices do not include shipping. The best way to buy these is to get as many from one source as possible to avoid duplicating shipping costs.

Bulk use:

sodium chloride
magnesium chloride
sodium sulfate

Intermediate Use:

calcium chloride
potassium chloride

Minor Use:

sodium bicarbonate
potassium bromide
boric acid
strontium chloride
sodium fluoride

Sources:

NaCl-I looked at Tractor supply, but their NaCl had anti caking agents in it, so it is not pure. Morton Pool Salt is pure, powdered, and about $8 for a 40# Bag from big box Home Improvement Stores.

Magnesium Chloride-$16 for 6# at BRS, cheaper for higher weight purchases.

Sodium Sulfate-$8 for 5# from a Biodiesel company. Cheaper the more you buy.

Calcium Chloride-$10 for 3.5# from BRS, cheaper for higher weight purchases.

Potassium Chloride-Sold as a salt substitute. Should be available at most grocery stores or health food stores for $3.

Sodium Bicarbonate- Baking soda, cheap. Available at any grocery/drug store. Maybe $2.

Potassium Bromide-$10 for 1#, from photography supply place.

Boric Acid-roach killer, cheap, $4 a bottle from Hardware store, HD/Lowes.

Strontium Chloride-100 grams for $9 from science supply company.

Sodium Flouride-100 grams for $10 from science supply company.

Total cost (approximate, and shipping charges not included) about $80 for enough chemicals to make about 200 gallons of seawater.

After the initial chemical purchses, then a guesstimate of about $11 per 200 gallons of mix after that based on 40# bag NaCl purchases and incremental use of the other supplies, which could be cheaper based on larger weight purchases of Bulk use ingedients magnesium Chloride and Sodium sulfate.

Mixing up 200-300 gallon batches could be easily done with one of those flat plastic concret mixing tubs and a garden hoe.

oz · May 29, 2010

Garden hoe's can be expensive!

jhutto · May 29, 2010

you mean garden ho's

acroholic · May 29, 2010

When I typed that word I knew the Forum Comedians would show up!

grouper therapy · May 29, 2010

Hey Dave anymore discovered sources? Working on some myself.

acroholic · May 29, 2010

grouper therapy;517595 wrote: Hey Dave anymore discovered sources? Working on some myself.

Just the ones I have found. If you want them I'll PM you every one I found. If you are interested we could make up a batch and split the cost of the ingredients, and get the ingredients from the cheapest sources. I'd be willing to try it on my 60 gallon reef initially, as it would be easy to replace with a commercial blend if the critters didn't like the homemade mix.

acroholic · May 29, 2010

One thing about making your own salt is you could definitely design it to have whatever levels of calcium and magnesium you needed.

smoothie · May 29, 2010

Talk about a small group buy to lower costs. A few guys pitching in would make this alot cheaper.

acroholic · May 29, 2010

But..........this DIY salt could also kill everything in your tank...who is going to take the risk? I'm willing, but just because I found a recipe doesn't mean it is a good one, hehehe!

Actually, I am ordering the supplies online right now. I decided to go with lab grade chemicals for the minor use chemicals instead of getting boric acid from Roach Killer or Potassium Chloride from salt substitute because the cost difference is minimal, and these parts of the recipe you use so little of, that a 100 gram bottle would last forever.

These ingredients are coming from a Lab Supply company:

potassium chloride
sodium bicarbonate
potassium bromide
boric acid
strontium chloride
sodium fluoride

These ingredients are coming from Bulk Reef Supply.

magnesium chloride
calcium chloride

From a biodiesel company:

sodium sulfate

Pure NaCl will come locally from Lowes or a swimming pool supply company.

The trick is ordering the bulk use chemicals in the ratios they will be used in. for example, you use about 4x more mag chloride that calcium chloride, so you need to have a 4:1 ratio of mag. chloride to Ca chloride in your raw materials.

jeep9783 · May 29, 2010

Now this my friends is very cool thread. You must have a very expensive scale (from past hobby's of course...the younger days) to mesure out some of the stuff. Really cool thread. I am tuning into this one

grouper therapy · May 29, 2010

Sure send them(sources) over Dave as I will mine as well. I have a couple of tanks that I will try it in as well no problem.

smallblock · May 29, 2010

I'll be your huckleberry, I'll try it in my brothers tank!!

weaglereefer · May 29, 2010

http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Pocket-Scales-Jewelry-Scale/dp/B001PUE244/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1275400910&sr=1-7">http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Pocket-Scales-Jewelry-Scale/dp/B001PUE244/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1275400910&sr=1-7</a>

Scale

making your own salt mix.

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