Why Purity is important

Why Purity is important
In the modern world of Reef Keeping controlling the accumulation of impurities in the aquarium has been one of the cornerstones of having long-term success in growing and keeping corals in good health and vigour. The advent of affordable ICP testing has given us great insight into how potentially toxic elements can accumulate in the aquarium over time. 

Why do these elements accumulate
The simple answer is that with a saltwater aquarium what is not consumed by corals like Calcium and key elements, remains in the water. So as a simple example if you had a few micrograms of an element in your top-up water for example silicate. Every week you will be replacing gallons of water through evaporation in the top-up reservoir. Well, those low levels over the weeks and months won’t be quickly consumed and continue to build till they reach a level where an opportunistic diatom or algae will suddenly overrun the tank. The same can be said about metals that can enter the system, these low trace levels gradually accumulate.

Ok but I do water changes
The oldest rule of fish keeping is dilution is the solution to aquarium pollution. So in an ideal world, water changes certainly help, as long as the salt mix has a high level of purity and control over these undesirable elements. This brings us nicely to why we are here.

Nyos Pure for a reason
Nyos spent a good few years developing the ingredients and formula for their Pure reef salt product. It came out of the simple idea of making a better salt that had fewer impurities that could affect coral health. Through all their testing they found corals in their White Corals Farm just simply did better for using a high purity salt, especially over time. It’s pretty much a fact that changing your salt for one water change is never enough to see the difference. What they noticed is over time a high purity salt improved corals’ health, vigour, growth, and colour in these test systems compared to the same species kept in the alternative salt.

Why do salt mixes have impurities? 

Making a salt mix is a complex process to replicate Seawater, you need a whole bunch of chemicals to represent the major and minor elements. Each one of those elements has a myriad of grades and levels of impurities. For example, the largest part of any mix will be the Sodium Chloride element,  salt mixes on the market today often use what is called evaporative salt. This is taken from open-air evaporation pools and the process is as old as civilisation. Seawater is drawn into inlet pools and allowed to evaporate in the sun leaving behind salt containing all the elements that were in the Seawater but now in a dried combined form. The process of evaporation always seemed ideal to me at first glance, ok take dried sea salt add water yippee I have seawater again. Well, it’s just not that simple the elements in the evaporative salt combine in different ways and evaporate at different rates many volatile elements also just evaporate into the air. Through this evaporative process that can take many months, the pools are open to dust storms and the elements so there is also the possibility of sand grit and other pollutants entering into the mix. For most applications this does not matter, as much of the evaporative salt is often sold for use on roads during winter.

Where Nyos started with the development process was to avoid totally the use of these potentially problematic base ingredients. The base is a high purity sodium chloride, free from unwanted pollutants or elements. Blending this base with other high purity key ingredients like calcium, magnesium etc produces a salt that is simply called Pure for a reason. It’s not the cheapest way to make salt but we believe it gives a superior product for your corals.

Independently Verified
There are plenty of salts on the market that offer their own analysis of each bucket but Nyos has gone the extra mile by supply you with an independent 3rd party test, through Triton Lab. Each bucket has a QR Code which is your independent verification of the contents and takes you straight to the Triton analysis.

Give it a go and your corals will appreciate the difference.