Personal story.
I use seachem prime, I change water now weekly 50%. I'm been up front in other threads about why I change so much water on that tank and my current over stocking level so neither is a secret, just not very important to the story here. What is important is my
pH is now coming up. 6.4 on the previous water change, 6.6 on the latest water change last weekend. With that pH rise, I have nitrites, currently sitting at 1ppm. it's been as high as 5ppm this time last week and not as high as 10ppm but was heading that way. it's coming down now, but when I hit 6.4, this is when it appeared and ran up and now back down. Adjustments of the bacteria colony with the pH change I assume. the nitrite rise also coincided with a massive diatom bloom that is now also getting under control with the nitrites going down again.
Anyways, Prime works for like 24- 48 hours. I do not dose it outside of the water change at all, and fish do not die from 5ppm nitrites or even higher for like even days. no visible effect to them at all.
So is it the prime? Are some fish just more sensitive than other species to nitrites? does pH and temp have an effect on nitrites?
Theres' about 100 questions really, and the answer is,,,,, who knows. I know if I were new to fishkeeping and I tested ammonia or nitrites and saw 5ppm, and dosed prime and the fish lived, I'd assume,"yeah, prime does what it says" . However, knowing more about water and pH and ammonia and
nitrogen cycle, and yada yada, I'd think it doesn't do anything and it's likely the natural process doing it and not killing things.
As far as it goes, a bunch of products make this claim now, do ANY of them actually do anything to ammonia or nitrites that the temp and pH couldn't do itself, or some other random set of circumstances and fish tolerances that make a high reading still safe that gets attributed to these products.... Could be, most likely actually.
I can't blame a company for marketing, people say it works, just like people say those red copper pans are nonstick, but every one I have needs to be scrubbed like no tomorrow after cooking anything in it, everything sticks like it's coated with glue. LOL
it's a dechlorinator, and I use far less of it to do the job than other products, it's why I use it. What's in it and the process, well, that's proprietary and they aren't sharing, rather they are being vague when asked how it works and change the answers given when called out that it's not plausible. It's not that they don't know, come on. They know what it does or doesn't do, but if people are going to tell them "hey this worked to keep my fish alive!", why not run with those testimonies.
I mean Ammonia tests in the hobby as an example. Since introduced they are total ammonia nitrate (TAN) tests. it gives you ammonia and ammonium totals in the readings, the only one that is concerning is the ammonia. Nobody knows this until experience sets in, the petstores don't know this either for the most part or how to read the ammonia test and cross it with the pH test to figure out how much free ammonia there might be and if it's dangerous for the fish or not.
Rather than use a Free ammonia nitrate test (FAN), which likely wouldn't be sensitive enough in an aquarium setting, unless really expensive tool, so it can't be done cheaply, the hobby as a whole just says "ammonia bad, don't have ammonia", and tells people above .50 or 1ppm ammonia will kill their fish.
in my opinion, THAT's WHERE the misleading and cashgrab starts and everyone is just riding it out. how many
water tests get sold a year? of those "kits" sold how many of people know the ammonia test isn't even close to accurate about the danger level that is present?
What if I told you I don't even test for ammonia ever like at least 5 years now, more like 10 years.
Man I wanted to when I saw the nitrites, bet on that, but I don't even own a method to test it and instead let it ride, having faith in my pH, my bacteria colony, and my fish as well as my ability to water change if anyone acted weird... they haven't, but I DO NOT think the dosing prime 1x a week with a 50% water change is protecting me, sure it's protecting them from chlorine, that's about it.
I could however say it must be the prime, it's the only thing I use, what else could it be? I could say that if I didn't understand more about this than a beginner does.
There's people that swear pH 9.2 alkaline water is healthy to drink, that it's going to have some beneficial effect, I say "HOW"?
Once it's hits your stomach it's pH 1.5-2.0 just like the acid in there and everything else you swallow.
(by the way as the high alkaline water sits without a
buffer open to the air, it loses pH the moment it's in contact with air, but the believers don't believe that either, the fishkeeprs know this though!)
Marketing. I won't go as far to call stuff snake oil, I will say people believe and trust what they believe and trust and there's no telling them otherwise. is it dishonest to sell people what they want and believe in? Perhaps....but there's a whole lot of that out there, not just with prime.
