Water Conditioners

[Jerry Sem]

What do you all recomend as a water conditioner. I don't want anything that will "neutalize my fertilizer" I'm now using a 3/4 dose of Aquarium CO-OP's Easy Green on Sundays and a 3/4 dose of API's Leaf Zone (for the Iron and Potassium) on Wednesdays. Why, you ask, Well for 2 reasons. First, because that's what I have on the shelf and secondly, 6 pumps, twice a week (12 pumps total) with Easy Green and too much lighting (brightness and duration) was playing heck with my plants vs algae ballance. I now do a 20%-30% water change every other Sundays. With that and cutting back on fertilizers and cutting back on my lighting, to 80% for 9 hours (instead of 100% for 12 hours) it has made a huge difference. It is really beautiful and algae free. But I degress, so when I do my water changes, I prep the replacement water with SeaChem's Prime. I think this is not my best option. I could be wrong, that's why I here. Adding Prime with Easy Green is counter productive. I "heard" Prime will neutralize some of the nutrients added by Easy Green, making my doseage a waist of time and money. Please correct me if I got this wrong. I also "heard" the API's Tap Water Conditioner is very good. Opinions on water conditioners please. thanx

 

[Jerry Sem]

sorry forgot to include a few pics

 

[Goose3080]

What do you all recomend as a water conditioner. I don't want anything that will "neutalize my fertilizer" I'm now using a 3/4 dose of Aquarium CO-OP's Easy Green on Sundays and a 3/4 dose of API's Leaf Zone (for the Iron and Potassium) on Wednesdays. Why, you ask, Well for 2 reasons. First, because that's what I have on the shelf and secondly, 6 pumps, twice a week (12 pumps total) with Easy Green and too much lighting (brightness and duration) was playing heck with my plants vs algae ballance. I now do a 20%-30% water change every other Sundays. With that and cutting back on fertilizers and cutting back on my lighting, to 80% for 9 hours (instead of 100% for 12 hours) it has made a huge difference. It is really beautiful and algae free. But I degress, so when I do my water changes, I prep the replacement water with SeaChem's Prime. I think this is not my best option. I could be wrong, that's why I here. Adding Prime with Easy Green is counter productive. I "heard" Prime will neutralize some of the nutrients added by Easy Green, making my doseage a waist of time and money. Please correct me if I got this wrong. I also "heard" the API's Tap Water Conditioner is very good. Opinions on water conditioners please. thanx

I did use API Aqua Essential as my water conditioner, but as im nearly out ive decided to give Seachem Prime a try as I keep hearing good things about it, for my plants im using Seachem Flourish twice a week (fertilizer), Wednesday and Saturday, and also adding Seachem Flourish Excel (carbon) everyday until the bottle is gone as they are fairly new plants, they are growing like crazy except the one that everyone said would grow like crazy which is my water wisteria, im going to assume Seachem have tested all these products together to work in harmony with each other.

The one at the back behind the wave maker I only brought Sunday just gone as the damn loaches were digging the original plants up all the time and pretty much killed it, its grown about an inch in a few days, the one at the back on the other side by the filter intake and outlet mixed in with the wisteria is 2 weeks old and was tiny when I brought it, its gone crazy, its nearly at the water surface, its trimming time for that one very soon.

 

[Fishmanic]

I see some nice tanks here. Consider entering Tank of the Month contest. We are accepting entries right now for tanks sized at 16 gallons and smaller.

 

[Goose3080]

I see some nice tanks here. Consider entering Tank of the Month contest. We are accepting entries right now for tanks sized at 16 gallons and smaller.

Mines 55 gallons lol

 

[Fishmanic]

55 gallons can be entered in February Tank of the Month

 

[Essjay]

If you have chlorine in your tap water, look at API Tap Water Conditioner. It contains just thiosulfate to remove ammonia and EDTA to bind metals. But it doesn't detoxify ammonia, so if you have chloramine you may need a different water conditioner.

 

[Back in the fold]

The only two water conditioners I use are heat and air.

 

[Byron]

If you have chlorine or chloramine in your source water, and no other "issues" such as ammonia, nitrite or nitrate [note this is in the source water, not occurring in the aquarium] then the best conditioner you can use is API's Tap Water Conditioner. It also binds/detoxifies heavy metals [as most conditioners do], but the API does this so the plants canstill utilize the metal nutrients. Seachem's Prime uses another chemical which does not allow plants to take up these metal nutrients, and that is a problem. This is unnecessary and a risk to fish; the fewer chemicals entering the tank water, the fewer to get inside the fish causing problems.