Re: Aquatic Plants Digest V6 #71

[Greg Morin <greg at seachem_com>]

>
>
>	Hmmmmm.  I infer from this that the stuff is highly effective
>in removing metal ions, but that the typical dose is so low that your
>trace elements swamp it.  If that is the case, it won't remove the heavy
>metals too well if there is iron there - the iron will take just about
>all of it.
>
>	I'd like to hear another explanation....



Close, let me try to explain again ;-)

I'm just going to use arbitrary values here to make an illustration. 
Let's say you have 1 ppb of lead in your tap water. You add Prime _to 
the tap water_ and the Prime removes the 1 ppb of lead. You then take 
that tap water and add whatever you normally add to it in preparation 
for doing a water change. Nothing else is lost because the trace 
heavy metals in the tap have already been removed. The effect is very 
minor and operates in the sub 10 ppb range. Also, the "heaviest" of 
the heavy metals are preferentially precipitated (i.e. leady, 
mercury, cadmium, etc).

-Greg Morin