So I have been chatting a bit with Michael Del Prete, owner of Aqua Craft for a while now as I had used one of his mid-grade salts years ago but had changed to Red Sea Pro Coral and then over to Tropic Marin Pro for no real reason except ease of finding it. The main challenge with Aqua Craft salt is that you can only buy it online to my knowledge, I don't know any LFS's that sell it. I ended up getting 2 cases of it for Christmas and have done 4 water changes now with it and have to say I've been really happy with the results. I'm using his high end salt which is actually a 2-part salt, called Marine Environment. It comes with a little bottle of additives that you pour in and a previous RC TOTM refers to as "coral crack" and I think I'm going to have to agree with that statement.

Michael had referred me to talk to that TOTM owner as they had been loyal Tropic Marin users for many years but like some of the reviews on RC and other forums over the years there seemed to be bad batches (extremely low alk issues) on occasion. Most of you know I'm a lazy reefer and have automated as much as possible as I also can travel quite a bit for work. So while I don't have test results on the CA, Alk, and Mag upon mixing...I can say it has been the cleanest mixing salt I've ever used. No residue ever left and my corals have been responding well. I'm noticed increased color and growth in my SPS...not sure if it's 100% attributed to the salt but I'm only doing water changes at about 15% (25g) every 2-3 weeks.

You can buy the salt online at a 10% discount the first Wed of every month. The Marine Environment brand salt is not cheap. Aqua Craft has been providing salt to aquariums all over the world since the 70's and that seems to be their target market vs. the average hobbyist. For those of you that mix and the cost isn't an issue I'd suggest trying out a box of the 6 (25g) bags and see how the results are. At this point I'll be sticking with using Marine Environment.

http://aquacraft.net/products-page/m...n-tank-6-pack/