Toxivec

[chocolatedelight]

Hi,

I was told toxivec as well as seachem is a good dechlorinator, only reason I am thinking of toxivec is that I have a credit note from LFS and thats the only one other than some other dodgy looking ones they sell

thanks

 

[nurglespuss]

All the dechlorinators/tp water conditioners are pretty much the same nowadays, the technology has moved on over the years. the only difference is effective concentration strength. i.e. a bottle may seem stupidly expensive, but if used at correct dosage will outlast a similarly/larger sized bottle of cheaper conditioner.

Buy which ever one suits your wallet best.

 

[waterdrop]

I've never heard of toxivec. I agree that the fundamental chemical for removing chlorine and chloramine is probably more consistently produced and distributed between manufacturers now than it used to be but I still feel there may be room for creativity by the chemists in how they craft the additions that lead to the extra functions (handling of heavy metals and different toxicities and more) and certainly there are differences in care of manufacturing operations different products are subjected to. Of course, its easy for us hobbyists to get going on a given recommendation and have it get magnified by being repeated again and again and it will always be hard to separate that out from any real differences in the products. I think for most experienced hobbyists it becomes a buildup of comments they've heard at get-togethers and read on their forums and bits of direct experience in their tanks.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[chocolatedelight]

im using nutrafin aquaplus at the mo. Also as i am now stuck with a fish so need to do a fish in cycle, can i just do the change between products on the next water change or does it need to be introduced in slowly somehow??

 

[Davo86]

Toxivec is made by a well known German company called Sera and is an all round 'pollutant remover' it removes everything from chlorine/chloramine to ammonia/nitrite to excesss treatments

 

[JoshuaA]

im using nutrafin aquaplus at the mo. Also as i am now stuck with a fish so need to do a fish in cycle, can i just do the change between products on the next water change or does it need to be introduced in slowly somehow??

Go for Seachem prime ASAP. Nutrafin Aquaplus is relatively useless and I found it the same, I still have half of a big bottle since I never bothered using it once I found out neutralising Chrlomines means making Ammonia. Then finding out Nutrafin Aquaplus doesn't neutralise Ammonia. Most likely you are making conditions for your fish actually poorer when you change the water. It explained why we had 0.5 consistently after water changes whilst we used it.

 

[chocolatedelight]

Thanks folks

 

[cybergibbons]

It does wind me up how very very few of the chemicals we are supposed to dose our tanks with actually list ingredients, or even the mechanism by which they are supposed to take action. You often have to infer it from smells, colours and warnings. Sometimes you can get hold of the MSDS. I don't think most additives are rocket science, but it would be good to know how they do it.

 

[OldMan47]

Dechlorinator is a solution of sodium thiosulphate.

The various brand name manufacturers add things like aloe vera in the hope of selling their product, but the dechlorination effect of all of them uses the same chemical. The only thing that seems to vary is the concentration of that chemical.

I use Prime because it is far more concentrated than most of the others and I need to keep down cost per tank or get rid of a few tanks. I have no intent of getting rid of any tanks so the cost of things like dechlorinator must be controlled.

 

[FishyWishie]

I may also moved to prime then once ive finished this bottle of aqua+

 

[JoshuaA]

I may also moved to prime then once ive finished this bottle of aqua+

I would recommend getting a bottle on order ASAP, the Aqua+ really is a poor product, I have half a 375ml bottle probably going to empty it to use it as a smaller prime bottle as I don't have much room next to my tank and the big bottle doesn't fit in the shelf lol!

The whole Chloromine > Ammonia really annoyed me when I found out and that Aqua+ can in fact make conditions worse from the tap than the water already is if you are water changing.

 

[OldMan47]

I know of nothing at all wrong with the Aqua+ product. I have merely changed over to a method that ends up costing me less in the long run. Even with 25 tanks up and running, I can expect to use the same 500 ml bottle of Prime for several years.

 

[waterdrop]

Good info from Davo86 up there. Sera is a well respected company, leaving me every reason to believe Toxivec at the least would fall in line with the other straight Na Thiosulfate products. Still, I've not seen it on any of the comparison reviews that are out there, so I wouldn't be able to conjecture about other functions beyond the basic dechlor/dechloram.

I'm going to differ slightly from OM47 here, although its mostly based on thread reading and only a tiny bit on experience. First of all, I agree that greater concentration and therefor lower expense is the primary reason Prime gets recommended a lot and used by a lot of us, me included. However, I've become somewhat convinced by threads here on TFF and even on some other sites that Prime really does do a better job at some of the add-on functions (even though I agree a big part of adding any of those functions is to promote sales of the product.) Its just that I've stumbled across any number of posts (mostly this was a couple of years ago) where members related glowing reports of Prime having helped (in the temporary way, which is all that can be expected) with the whole business of neutralizing all three toxins (ammonia converted to ammonium, nitrite and nitrate toxicity somewhat neutralized.) Of course, it should always be warned that any conditioner that helps with this can only do so for at most a 24 to 48 hour period, and Prime is no exception, but this can be useful when ammonia spikes because of a gravel clean and the conditioner is dosed in the return water. It can also be useful in other sorts of minor emergencies.

I did also experience some immediate improvement in one of my own fishless cycles when I switched to Prime from another brand of conditioner which I had used and liked for many years in my previous period in the hobby. Being only one case, this of course can't count for much, but it was my observation at the time.

~~waterdrop~~