I tested out the new salt Oceanic is producing now. They'd mailed me a trial sample to make 5 gallons. Adding the entire amount to exactly 5 gallons of water, I let it mix for an hour. It was clear within 5 minutes, and dissolved completely. For 30 more minutes I aerated it by raising the hose the pump was connected to, to pound the surface of the water. These were the results.

Temp - 80.5 F

Salinity - 1.024

pH - 8.06

dKH - 7.0 (which surprised me)

Ca - 475

Mg - 1185

PO4 - 0

NH4 - 0

NO3 - 0

Not bad at all. Depending on the price of a 200g bucket, it might be worth the switch. I'll retest Kent's Sea Salt in the near future to compare numbers.

I did water tests on both reef tanks, and updated the Parameters Page.

For some inexplicable reason, my phyto culture seemed to crash again. It was very faint green, and appeared to be heading toward yellow... (dead). I went ahead and restarted two new bottles with some that I had stored in the fridge. I don't know what is causing it to crash, because it continues to be random rather than by an observable pattern. I tested salinity of the bad batch, to see if maybe it was too high, but it was 1.018 which is just about normal.