Pond Prime is identical to Prime?

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
Settles it for me as I have been reading this thread. I will be switching to Pond Prime and using the 1/2 dose for my tank. If I see any issues I could always switch up to a full dose but still save a few bucks per 2L bottle.

I like Prime better for my main tank then stress coat or other products. Just seems to work better though I do use stress coat for my breeder tanks as the guppies dont seem to notice the cheaper product. HA HA
 
vfc;4893200; said:
I switched over to Pond Prime last year and have not seen any issues dosing at half the amount I was with regular Prime.

I have posted before about the poor water quality I have from my water company. Out of my tap I have Chloramine, nitrates between 5-15ppm, small amount of ammonia, heavy metals, and a varying PH (water is naturally alkaline, but in the summer months they pump acidic water from abandon coal mines to supplement the river water flow for the upstream nuclear power plant). Oh and did I mention there are 82 waste treatment plants upriver from the pipe our water company draws from?

My water is so bad that if I have to premix Prime in a holding tank. If I add the tap water directly into the tank and add Prime while I'm doing it, I end up killing some of my small fish in the community tank and my large cichlids flash on the gravel for about an hour.

So the fact that I am using PP at half the dose as I did the years before without fish loss or flashing is an indication that the dose PP dose is safe.
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I really believe this is the only way we will get a straight answer about the differences of Pond Prime and Prime. Personal experiences from members here that have actually tried it.

Thank you for posting your experience for us to read!
 
and while on the subject; here is a tip to help measure the exact amount of Prime. I use a 10ml syringe (purchase at CVS or Walgreens) and an old 500ml bottle of Prime. The syringe fits perfectly in the mouth of the bottle. I draw the exact amount without spilling a drop. One cap full = 5ml, so a full draw on the syringe equals two cap fulls.

I posted this tip about two years ago. I'm still using the same syringe and bottle. I can fill up the 500ml bottle four times from the 2L Pond Prime bottle (amazing when math calculations and actual experience matches).

So instead of buying the usual eight (8) 500ml bottles of Prime each year, I purchased one (1) 2L bottle of Pond Prime. However, as I mentioned in a previous post, the price for PP increased 25% from last year.

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vfc;4893200; said:
I switched over to Pond Prime last year and have not seen any issues dosing at half the amount I was with regular Prime.

I have posted before about the poor water quality I have from my water company. Out of my tap I have Chloramine, nitrates between 5-15ppm, small amount of ammonia, heavy metals, and a varying PH (water is naturally alkaline, but in the summer months they pump acidic water from abandon coal mines to supplement the river water flow for the upstream nuclear power plant). Oh and did I mention there are 82 waste treatment plants upriver from the pipe our water company draws from?

My water is so bad that I have to premix Prime in a holding tank and aerate the water for a couple hours. If I add the tap water directly into the tank and add Prime while I'm doing it, I end up killing some of my small fish in the community tank and my large cichlids flash on the gravel for about an hour.

So the fact that I am using PP at half the dose as I did the years before without fish loss or flashing is an indication that the PP dose is safe.
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Good to know, thanks for sharing.
 
While I am basing this assumption on nothing, but speculation, its impossible for Seachem to know how much chlorine a given dosage will need to remove. It would seem that there is plenty of headroom in their recommended dosage so that variations in municipal chlorination will not significantly alter the efficacy of the treatment. In other words, the standard capful dose would probably treat much more water than the 50 gallons Seachem states.

Having known quite a few pondkeepers, I dont think they tend to be as rigorous about maintenance the typical MFKer. If the cost to treat their pond with Prime were to approach $20 or $30, I bet many would just forgo dechlorination all together.

It doesnt make much sense for Seachem to have 2 different formulations of the same product, so instead they make one formula which is very effective and then understate the performance for home aquaria for that reason.

We have been selling pond prime to the large tank community for some time, and have had zero complaints from anyone. I have personally used it at home, and I see no difference between the two.

 
Thank you for the confirmation Johnny Roastbeef, it is good to hear of positive experiences regarding things like this.

Back to my email.
It is definitely a marketing ploy. When I challenged their answer by calling them out on a minimum size of pond that Pond Prime should be used on seeing as the generic term pond could amount to surface area smaller than a lot of average sized aquariums they have not given me an answer and claim that there was confusion.
The reply, "Hello, I apologize for the confusion. Because of the fact that a pond is considered an open space instead of a closed box type of ecosystem, the amount if Prime needed tends to be less. If you feel that your aquarium setup is more representative of a pond instead of a typical aquarium, you may be fine to go ahead and use the pond dosing scheme. Please let us know if we can assist you further."


They have refused to give me direct answers to my questions which means that it is a marketing script to keep people buying the far more expensive Aquarium Prime.
If this was not the case they would have given me a straight answer to two very simple questions which would have consisted of hard scientific fact from any studies they have carried out or they would have stated that "studies have shown...."
Also, in the UK, products have to be labelled in a certain way under new labelling laws. For example, if surface area was as important as they made out then they would have to state the technical details of pond minimums under the directions for use and/or warnings about the product such as it's effect on dosing an aquarium rather than a pond. This was a major clue to their marketing bull.
 
So it's marketing. There's nothing wrong with that. The best smelling perfume would never sell one single bottle if it came in a gallon jug for $1.95. Do you think a top shelf bottle of Vodka costs 10X more to produce than a bottle of Smirnoff. Of course not.

You need to price your products to meet the expectations of your target consumer. Good thing we're all smart enough to make an educated decision here.
 
My bottle of Prime says says 5 ml treats 50 gallons and that

1 ml treats

.8mg/L ammonia
1.2 mg/L chloramine
3.3 mg/L chlorine

Does the bottle of pond prime give amounts like this? seems like that would put some hard numbers to all this.
 
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