Why Use Prime?

Please excuse my dramatic sounding title, I absolutely agree that water conditioners are vital, but in my local shop (a hardware store originally) I bought a bottle that says it "is designed to help make tap water safe for your fish. It removes harmful chlorine and chloramine, and detoxifies heavy metals in the water. Simply add directly to water following the instructions provided."

How is this any different to Prime? It is half the price, is it worth paying the extra for something I'm missing out on?

 

And the name of that bottle?

 

And the name of that bottle?

Its just "Wilko Tap Water Conditioner", with Wilko being the name of the shop

 

There are plenty of quality water conditioners out there. I'd be sure to use a trusted name brand. I guess the main advantage of using Prime is that it temporarily neutralizes ammonia.
Prime is also very concentrated.

 

Even simple sodium thiosulphate can be used to dechlorinator water. Peroxide or even vitamin d would work too. If you go the concentration route safe is more concentrated.

 

How is this any different to Prime? It is half the price, is it worth paying the extra for something I'm missing out on?

what's the dosage per gallon? how many gallons does that bottle treat compare to the same sized bottle of Prime?

and like others have said, it temporarily detoxes ammonia. also, reverses the negative effects of nitrite poisoning aka brown blood disease aka methemoglobin.

 

As far as just conditioning water, almost anything is fine. Prime is potent, relatively cheap, and has ancillary properties. It's also a seachem product so it is well known and seachem stands fully behind their products.

All in all though, I'd rather use safe, but I can't buy it locally so I keep prime around for when I forget to order more safe.

 

I would look at the dosage aswell, a small bottle of prime does a lot of water.

 

Thanks for all your replies guys, I hadn't considered the concentration, though I knew of the neutralising ammonia. Prime is far harder to find in the UK, you have to go to overpriced pet shops to find it, at least near me.
Thanks all

 

Thanks for all your replies guys, I hadn't considered the concentration, though I knew of the neutralising ammonia. Prime is far harder to find in the UK, you have to go to overpriced pet shops to find it, at least near me.
Thanks all

If you want even more economical, buy safe online. It's 1/4 teaspoon for 300 gallons for chlorine and chloramine, or the same amount for 75 gallons for ammonia. You just dump the powder into the tank and go.

 

If you want even more economical, buy safe online. It's 1/4 teaspoon for 300 gallons for chlorine and chloramine, or the same amount for 75 gallons for ammonia. You just dump the powder into the tank and go.

I did use it when I first set up my tanks, and was hesitant to differ from the recommended at all. I will have a look at going back to it if it works out cheaper from Amazon, thanks

EDIT: So I did a comparison, and found that prime is 30% more concentrated but costs 25% more without postage, so I think I will stick with my off-brand stuff until I have a higher income!

 

Everyone's always against the test strips, but the master kits can be expensive. Get it online if you can. Otherwise, I used API 5 in 1 to effectively cycle a tank. It did not have an ammonia test, but I had LOTS of plants and you can gestimate ammonia (roughly) by watching nitrite and nitrate levels.

I would like to point out that Seachem Prime only TEMPORARILY BINDS ammonia. It does NOT remove it. When it does this, nitrifying bacteria cannot eat it. So when the binder dissolves it releases the ammonia back into an already overloaded tank. So you have to keep treating with Prime until there is enough bacteria to handle it all. So while Seachem Prime can save your fish in a crisis, long term dosing could be expensive and potentially fatal if you skip a dose or a water change.

I bookmarked this quote the other day, thought it would help!

 

I bookmarked this quote the other day, thought it would help!

Thanks for this! So the ammonia binding part of prime is minimal help really... just another reason to stick to my cheaper off brand if you ask me!

 

I bookmarked this quote the other day, thought it would help!

Seachem denies this claim about bb not being able to consume it, and watching people fish in cycle with it, it's kind of obvious that the bb can consume the bound ammonia. Not only that, I believe the bound ammonia is temporarily converted to ammonium, which is readily consumed.

 

I like Tetra Aquasafe. It is just a basic decholrinator. It isn't anything extra. I bet your Wilko conditioner has the same active ingredient, sodium thiosulphate. Prime smells like sulfur or rotten eggs for a while in the tank, so the fish probably get stressed for a few hours while the tank still smells like that. That's one reason I don't use it.

Prime is more concentrated; however, because I have difficulty measuring dechlorinators, I would still overuse each product or 5ml of prime / cupful (treats up to 40 gallon) or 5ml aquasafe / half cupful (treats up to 10 gallon) to a 5 gallon bucket. The total ml per bottle cost about the same, so they would cost me about the same because I am not more scrupulous with measuring.

 

Pretty sure back when I started fishkeeping in the 90s (off and on since then), people just bought de-chlorinators simply for that purpose--to de-chlorinate. No one made a big fuss about any particular brand.

 

I buy cheap chinese tablets that do the same as prime just buy what ever is cheapest for you as long as it does its job it doesn't matter if you buy a big brand or not.

 

When I started fishkeeping in the '70s people didn't even dechlorinate.

Some of us did leave the buckets of tap water out overnight so the chlorine could evaporate off though.

Now chloramine is used here to disinfect the tap water instead of chlorine and it doesn't evaporate off.

500ml of Prime costs me £15 and lasts me 9 months which seems OK to me.

I have, however, saved £4,500 by running a cheaper car.

 

Even simple sodium thiosulphate can be used to dechlorinator water. Peroxide or even vitamin d would work too. If you go the concentration route safe is more concentrated.

Vitamin C or ascorbic acid or ascorbate. Very slow to neutralize chloramine though.

 

I like Tetra Aquasafe. It is just a basic decholrinator. It isn't anything extra. I bet your Wilko conditioner has the same active ingredient, sodium thiosulphate. Prime smells like sulfur or rotten eggs for a while in the tank, so the fish probably get stressed for a few hours while the tank still smells like that. That's one reason I don't use it.

Prime is more concentrated; however, because I have difficulty measuring dechlorinators, I would still overuse each product or 5ml of prime / cupful (treats up to 40 gallon) or 5ml aquasafe / half cupful (treats up to 10 gallon) to a 5 gallon bucket. The total ml per bottle cost about the same, so they would cost me about the same because I am not more scrupulous with measuring.

The fish are stressed by the smell? What are you even talking about? I doubt the fish smell it anyway. The reason you smell it is because you have the entire bottle near your face. As soon as you dump it in, it starts binding to everything it can and is massively diluted. This reasoning seems like a lot of anthropomorphizing.

With measuring, most any drug store will have syringes for small children for medicine. I used these when I had my 10 gallon running. It made life way easier. I now use a horse medicine oral syringe for when I want to dose flourish excel in my huge tank. It's not needed as much now that I run co2, but I experiment a lot and sometimes get unstable co2 from too much surface agitation so I just plug my 60 ml syringe into the tube I drilled into my 1 gal excel bottle, extract a syringe full, and squirt it into a filter outflow.