need a little help with a question

[paulmac54]

i picked up a water conditioner today at the LFS. it is called Sera Aqutan. The bottle reads that it is for freshwater fish, however they told me it is for saltwater too and the company is now bottling it under one name but this is an old bottle (expiration date is 6/2011). my reason for concern is that i just looked on the back and it contains 0.0002% methlyene blue. two questions, is methylene blue harmful to corals (which i think it is) and if so at this concerntration do you think it is ok to use this product in my reef tank?
thanks,
paul

[paulmac54]

bump....someone please help....i have already mixed the 55 gallons and need to do a water change in my two tanks. is 0.0002% enough to have an effect?
thanks

[Kannin]

If you need a water conditioner... then you must be using tap water. Even a water conditioner will not get the heavy metals out of tap water which will be bad for your reef. I buy my rodi from the lfs for 50 cents per gallon and it doesn't need to be conditioned.

[ahullsb]

I agree. Stop using tap water and get ro/di from the fish store, or buy a unit. I don't know how to answer the question about the conditioner. I guess I would be a little concerned if a company was lazy enough to bottle something for saltwater and reefs, that was marked as freshwater? There is no reason just to take the LFS employees word for it IMO. But hopefully someone on here will have the answer for you. Oh and I wouldn't do the water change until you find out for sure. Maybe try posting in the reef chemistry forum.

[greggnyce]

If you have invested all this money into a reef tank, you should buy an ro/di unit it is not worth losing your livestock and corals. take the 50 cents times the gallons per water change and multiply that by how many water changes you are doing and you can see that buying a unit pays itself off.

[Paul B]

I doubt methylene blue at a concentration of .0002 would hurt anything. If you added it to your tank the concentration would barely be a trace element.
As to your question I don't think it would hurt your corals but I think the recomandation on the label as to "fresh water use" would prevent me from using it with corals regardless of what the LFS tells you.
As to if you are using tap water or not I know that was not part of your question but if you are I would filter it through carbon instead of using a water conditioner.
Paul

[caspar]

Not to hijack this thread but seems to be a good place to ask this question. I use Tapwater but it is filtered through a 0.5 micron whole house filter then goes through a carbon filter do you all think this is good water for a reef till i can afford the RO/DI unit? I will try and find exactly what filter the 0.5 one is and give a link but it came from Lowes, it said on the package it gets rid of parasites etc. etc.

[Paul B]

Caspar the 0.5 micron filter will do nothing for your water for your reef. That is just a mechanical filter and any freshwater paracites will not affect your salt water anyway. The carbon will remove some copper from the plumbing and a few other things. The filter is better than nothing but it will not remove nitrates or phosphates which you probably have in your tap water. My tap water has a reading of 12 for nitrates. The nitrates and phosphates will accumulate in your tank and may cause algae problems. If your tap water does not contain these substances then you may be able to get away with no RO indefinately.
Paul

[IHCman]

See if this answers any questions.
http://www.sera.de/index.php?id=648&L=1

[MarkusII]

Hello paulmac,

do not use sera aquatan in saltwater - it will cause the skimmer to run crazy.
Absolutely innecessary stuff for reef tanks.

regards

Markus

[paulmac54]

the rep that i talked with said that use to be a major problem because of the vit. b, which i didnt understand but now they have lowered the amount so it will not do this. we will see what happens. maybe i should do a few gallons every other day over the next few weeks. thanks for the input guys!
paul

[Kannin]

Even if it is safe for saltwater... It doesn't say anything about being reef safe... only salt water fish safe. There is a major difference.