The Dumbing Down of Seachem

[RD.]

It was already in place for Seachem Safe, 3 years ago. Now, she gone.

This is precisely why I stated that they are not catering to the entire base, as you suggested. They clearly are not. The linked to spiel that they had 3 years ago was very clear, and precise, and would not have ever been seen by the average Joe at Petsmart, so no risk on losing brick & mortar sales to someone that doesn't own a scale, or a set of measuring spoons, or failed math in high school.

In it's place they have: For precise dosing, use the Seachem Digital Spoon Scale. https://www.seachem.com/digital-spoon-scale.php

How can a dose be precise, if one doesn't know exactly what residual in mg/l or ppm they are supposed to be dosing for? lol

 

[RD.]

Under Safe's directions they have the following:

May be added to aquarium directly, but better if added to new water first. If adding directly to aquarium, base dose on aquarium volume. For exceptionally high chloramine concentrations, a double dose may be used safely. To detoxify nitrite and nitrate in an emergency, up to 4 times normal dose may be used. If temperature is > 30 °C (86 °F) and chlorine or ammonia levels are low, use a half dose.

NOTE: These directions supersede all other prior packaging.

But they fail to mention, or warn consumers, that the dosage recommendation they are giving is for 1 ppm chloramine. So using their logic, 2 ppm chloramine (which is more of a typical average in North America IME and according to my research) equates to an exceptionally high chloramine concentration. When in reality 4 ppm would be exceptionally high, 2 ppm is average. That was my argument 3 yrs ago.

According to the CEO, and perhaps they have data to support this, a lot of people over dose water conditioners, and the result of that can be death from 02 depletion. I get that too.

But dumbing this all down isn't going to stop stupid. That's the part Seachem is missing. They seem to prefer that a fish suffers a slow fate from NH3 toxicity (even compared it to a mild sunburn), vs a quicker death from 02 depletion. One is easy to spot the symptoms of (fish gasping at the surface), so may field more complaints, vs the slow burn of low level NH3 exposure.

 

[CarpCharacin]

You should sue them for emotional trauma caused by them questioning your intellegence with their new directions.

 

[RD.]

Thanks, I'll make sure to spell intelligence correctly when I contact them.

 

[Lilyann]

Thanks, I'll make sure to spell intelligence correctly when I contact them.

Touche

 

[krichardson]

LMAO!

 

[Fat Homer]

In a way, i think seachem is also trying to cover their butts by having people under-dose rather than over-dose...

As RD. Mentioned, if you overdose you could potentially suffocate your fish...

So with people these days being lazier due to info being so readily available to them, i can almost bet a lot of people just grab the first bit of info about their water quality and use that for their calculations...

That in turn possibly caused problems as well if and when they over dosed with certain products leading to a lot of msgs to Seachem as well...

I mean the above is just pure speculation on my part, but having worked as a products distributor, i’ve seen the types of complaints people send in when they cant follow simple instructions...

 

[RD.]

In a way, i think seachem is also trying to cover their butts by having people under-dose rather than over-dose..

Absolutely, I mentioned this a few posts back, this was specifically mentioned to me by the CEO. The problem is that with chloramine, and larger volume water changes (such as I do) with higher pH values (like I have) ammonia toxicity is typically a far greater concern, than 02 depletion.

A good read on the toxicity of ammonia and fish can be found in the following article posted on the krib.

http://www.thekrib.com/Chemistry/ammonia-toxicity.html

Experiments have shown that the lethal concentration for a variety of fish species ranges from 0.2 to 2.0 ppm. Experiments have also shown that exposure to un-ionized ammonia concentrations as low as 0.002 ppm for six weeks causes hyperplasia of gill lining in salmon fingerlings and may lead to bacterial gill disease. At higher levels (>0.1 ppm NH3) even relatively short exposures can lead to skin, eye, and gill damage in some species.

 

[CarpCharacin]

Maybe they are putting mind control chemicals in the water conditioner to dumb down people who use it.

 

[jaws7777]

Rd thx for posting. I dont know if you remember this but a while back when i started using purigen again i ran into issues with the dosage (safe) because of the label/direction changes i dont remember the specifics but we (really you) had to figure out how to make sense of it when recharging the stuff