Human Coral Calcium Supplements

I found this article online and wondered about all those health stores that I see advertising "Pure Coral Calcium." It kind of makes me wonder if they just bottle up the same calcium we put into our tanks in pill form and stamp their label on the bottle. The article states that the coral calcium pills contain pure Calcium with traces of Magnesium and Strontium. This also made me wonder if the stuff we buy for our tanks isn't just finely crushed coral skeletons in powder form. Since I don't know for sure, maybe someone can answer.

Just something I was thinking about.

CAN CORAL CALCIUM PILLS BE GOOD
FOR YOU AND FOR CORAL REEFS?

Tom Goreau, Dec. 19 2002

There has been a recent surge of promotion selling "coral calcium pills". Selling ground up coral skeleton as a natural source of calcium is an endlessly recurring scam that hucksters pick up on every few years like clockwork. My colleague Wolf Hilbertz has a bottle of coral tablets someone was peddling in the 1960s.

Actually coral skeleton is very pure calcium carbonate, unless the coral is from a very muddy place and has included sediment grains, whose composition will vary from place to place. It contains no meaningful nutrients except a lot of calcium with traces of magnesium and strontium, but it is fundamentally no different nutritionally than any other form of limestone, including oyster shells, or ground up limestone rocks or marbles, which are certain to be nutritionally richer in trace metals. Actually the best form to take calcium is in organically chelated form, say calcium gluconate, which is much more readily absorbed by the stomach. The claim that corals build strong bones in humans than other forms of calcium is pure hype!

Coral Calcium at the health food store is just ground up sps.  The same thing we use in a calcium/CO2 reactor.  Aragonite.  Not of much use as an additive (other then when used with CO2).

Maybe that's the classification for any calcium carbonate regardless of origin... or maybe it's just portland cement .

"would you like agreggate with that order?"... 

nope.  But I spent a couple summers doing flatwork to help get through college, does that qualify?   You might say that now I'm in the asphault industry.

Edited by jfinch