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re: Sera iron test correction





Folks,

While perusing the archive I caught Dave's response to a previous letter
of mine. Something he said jogged my memory and now I have to recant
something I said. Hopefully anyone that read my original post will have an
opportunity to read this one.

I wrote in response to a letter by Bryan Bankhead:

>>This all gave me a very low opinion of Sera and their products.  Your
>>story reinforces that opinion.  Dave Gomberg may have figured out a way
>>to get the Sera kit to work by ignoring their instructions.  Thanks
>>Dave, but that still does nothing for my opinion of Sera.

Dave responded:

> Roger, I am sorry to hear you had problems with the Sera kit.   I have
> used two of them now and they work terrific for me. 

[snip]

> I think there is a caution in your tale that the life of the test kits
> may not be forever.   Truth be told, I have no idea how long it is.  I
> do know that my Sera iron kit test fluid has a strong sulfur smell.  Too
> bad you threw yours out.  It would be nice to know if it still smelled
> and how old it was.

The kit had no smell that I recalled, and that started me thinking, and I
checked some sites on the 'net.  It's been more than a year since I
decided that kit was a Sera test kit, but I was wrong.  The kit I had was
a Red Sea product, not a Sera product.  My apologies to Dave and to the
folks at Sera.  I'm back to having no opinion about the Sera kit.

The behavior that Mr. Bankhead reported (not reading much iron until the
concentrations got so high that the water was yellow as pee) was very much
what I saw from the Red Sea kit, so there's still something wrong here.

> Well, I am sure you will be happy with a Hach.  They are a very nice
> kit, if not quite as sensitive as the Sera.

Actually, I have no need for an iron test kit, so I never replaced the Red
Sea kit that I threw out.

My question about why the heck we need 0.5 mg/l of iron in our aquariums
still stands.


Roger Miller