Reef Threads anyone listen to this?

[Edwardw771]

I've been listening to this at work. Shhh don't tell my boss.

Christine Williams and Gary Parr do this PodCast every week and its very interesting at least to me.

This week they had a Reef Chemistry talk with Dr. Craig Bingman

http://www.reefthreads.com/

 

[TanksNStuff]

Cool, I'm checking it out now. If it's good, it might be worth seeing if they would like to speak at our Swap about Reef Chemistry? I know people suggested Randy Holmes Farley, but we know that he rarely if ever accepts an invitation. These two might be a good alternative if they are available.

 

[TanksNStuff]

Wow, about a half hour into this (pausing here and there since I'm at work) and it's really interesting to me too! I'm definitely going to listen to some of the older ones they have on there when I get a chance.

Thanks for the link Ed!

 

[Edwardw771]

Christine Williams spoke for us a few years back. Gary's talk is about photography. Dr. Craig Bingman has not spoke for us that I know of. He is speaking in Boston soon.

 

[jose7878]

I've been listening to reef threads since episode 1. Now their on episode 180 as of today. My podcast updates automatically every Monday morning.

 

[TanksNStuff]

Yea, Christine Williams sounded familiar to me, but the other two I don't know much about. I think it would be great to get any of those 3 for our Swap as they all seemed to have some great insight and knowledge of the hobby and chemistry.

 

[redfishbluefish]

Thanks for sharing Ed.



The one thing I noticed about Dr. Bingman's talk was how his DIY Mag solution totally differed from Dr. Holmes-Farley DIY Mag (Recipe 1, Part 3a)....both supposedly ionically balanced. Bingman says mix 10 volumes of magnesium chloride hexahydrate with 1 volume of Epsom salts while Holmes-Farley says 5 cups magnesium chloride hexahydrate with 3 cups of Epsom salts.


Something doesn't sound kosher with these two recipes being considerably different.




Maybe I'll post over on RC to see if I can get Randy to speak up.

EDIT TO ADD:

HERE is the link to my query on RC.

 

[TanksNStuff]

It seems to me that Dr. Bingman's recipe is just a lot more concentrated than Dr. Farley's. Perhaps both recipe's will work, but just at different dosage rates?

 

[redfishbluefish]

Yes, it is more concentrated, but the dilution doesn't matter when compairing ratios of ingredients (mag chloride to epsom). This is what is important when discussing ionic balance......specifically of the sulfate ions in epsom salt.


Bingman 10 to 1
Farley 5 to 3


For the sake of direct comparison


Bingman 5 to 0.5
Farley 5 to 3


Bingman has very little Epsom salt compared to Farley's....again in relationship to mag. chloride......and both are supposedly ionically balanced. Someone is lying.




If you wish to actually know the concentrations of each solution, the one DIY Bingman I found was 10 to 1 (by volume) mag. chloride to epsom where the person WEIGHED 2200g magnesium chloride hexahydrate with 200g Epsom salts and fill to four litres. The Farley solution, using cups, is made up to one gallon.

 

[redfishbluefish]

Looks like we got the answer over on RC.....when using Randy's DIY 2 part, his Mag recipe is correct for ionic balance (with the other ions being contributed by the alk and calc solutions). The Bingman recipe is correct when wishing to dose MAG and you are not using 2 part.

In retrospect, makes sense.......I learned something today! Dance

Again, thanks Ed.

 

[Edwardw771]

Glad to get you all worked up.

 

[TanksNStuff]

Ah, now that you explain the problem you saw (I didn't at first) and the reason that Jonathan gave over on RC... it makes sense to me too.

Thanks for being smart enough to see the problem, and for asking/finding the answer to it. At least now we know which recipe to use for each situation.