[APD] Re: RE: Navarro's tank and those funny tanks in Brazil

[Greg Morin <greg at seachem_com>]

> it in your tank, and you are done. You then use their Flourish line to
> provide the water column with macros and additional trace. Easy.  But now
> there are other commercial substrates like Eco Complete and Florabase that
> provide more than Flourite: all the trace minerals, not just iron as
> Flourite does.  These remind me of Substrate Gold, which had a big following
> here a few years ago. Heavily fortified with trace. Seachem says Flourirte
> provides only iron, or I would suppose iron is the only thing in high enough
> concentration thats worth them mentioning. Perhaps Greg can comment more on
> it. Flourish tabs however provides a much wider spectrum.


Flourite (and Flourite Red and  Onyx Sand) provides more than just 
iron (see below). Since iron is typically the most "talked about" 
substrate nutrient, that was the point we drove home in our 
marketing, but that does not mean the substrates are completely 
devoid of anything else.

	Flourite Red	Flourite	Onyx Sand
Ag	6.922		5.23	4.21
Al	15710		10210	240.35
As	12.7		4.6	3.8
B	0		0	3.86
Ba	104.3		123.9	2.04
Be	0.9305		0.6249	0.2469
Ca	120.2		195.3	21423.68
Cd	5.979		5.485	11.71
Co	7.757		5.748	2.34
Cr	21.95		13.03	8.05
Cu	19.45		17.36	6.03
Fe	16190		18500	1106.39
K	2417		2195	78.85
Mg	2816		2281	108542.87
Mn	46.84		64.79	63.14
Mo	12.37		9.372	4.06
Na	365		223.4	92.79
Ni	17.72		12.41	3.73
P	195.4		224.5	256.14
Pb	55.2		42.42	42.38
Sb	56.57		40.29	2.06
Se	79.42		64.66	0.00
Si	95.52		95.1	0.00
Sr	25.16		16.28	57.81
V	18.23		14.55	7.03
Zn	50.37		28.87	6.65

We have done analyses on the other products mentioned as well and the 
"micro" trace elements are pretty much in line between ours and 
theirs. I believe Carib Sea puts this information on the bag, however 
we do not for two reasons (1) this is a natural material so we do not 
have the level of control over every nutrient that state agricultural 
agencies would require. Don't get me wrong, the material is 
consistent in composition but the "smaller guarantees" are much more 
difficult to be sure of. For example, if we put "6 ppm" Cobalt on 
there and one lot happened to come up at 3 ppm they would say it's 
off by 100% and put a stop sale on it. That's just a hassle we don't 
need and in the end I don't think it makes one bit of difference in 
the end use application. The second (2) reason is that making these 
claims on the bag would make the product a fertilizer in the eyes of 
every state and thus require "registration" which is a euphemism for 
taxation without representation. We would then be forced to pass this 
cost on to the consumer and raise the price of the product because it 
is unfortunately quite exorbitantly high in most states.


> Jeff Senske, a big AGA contest winner uses Florabase exclusively. He swears
> by it. Eco Complete is very similar. It provides a wide range of traces with

Not to be contradictory ;-) but I talked to Jeff Senske at the AGA 
2002 and told us that he had experimented with Florabase in some 
aquariums but that it kind of "gave out" after about 6 months and he 
ended up switching back to Flourite . Maybe he was just telling us 
that because he was talking to the "Flourite guys" ;-) ;-) but that 
was my recollection of the conversation. If Jeff is on the list 
please correct me if I'm remembering that wrong or if your opinion 
has changed since we talked.

-Greg Morin



--

Gregory Morin, Ph.D.  ~~~~~~~President/CEO~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Seachem Laboratories, Inc.      www.seachem.com     888-SEACHEM
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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