Additives not always safe

[JOHANSWAN]

I am a member for a few years from England but never actually posted on this forum.I would just like to make this post to make people aware off the dangers of adding additives to their tank and the customer support you will get as a individual when you contact certain companies when their product goes upside down and destroy your tank.My tanks is 3-2-2 and sump is 3-2-18 with roughly 400 litres off seawater.
Hope I place this in the right section


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Trace Hard‏


Trace Hard
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JOHAN SWANEPOEL 15:03
To: H. Sekha, james.hayes@tropicalmarinecentre.co.uk

Dear Sir
Thank you for your reply after 2 months and making it clear to me that you refuse to take responsibility for a default Salifert product.

I have used Salifert since 2006 and Salifert made out 90% off my marine additives for my marine tank as well as test kits.Last year I started to use Salifert Hard Trace in my marine tank with great results.Towards the end of October 2014 I bought another bottle of Salifert Hard Trace as my present one were finishing.I received the product in a sealed condition and after starting to use it in my tank I started to have serious problems and the last thing I suspected to be the cause off my problems were the Salifert Hard Trace.
I lost all my fish I had for over 3 years with a proven pair off clown fish,90% off my sps corals,my duncan that I grew from 3 heads to over 60 heads and eventually my carpet anemone.I did not restock my tank at that time and over a period off 4 weeks I did a 30% water change each week and added nothing else.Only then did I purchase a pair off clown fish on the Friday and they were healthy and swimming around with no problems what-so-ever.On Sunday morning I dosed Salifert Hard Trace again according to the instructions on the bottle and within half an hour both my clowns were dead.It is only after this ordeal that I realised that it is the Salifert Hard trace product I added to my tank that is responsible for my losses off livestock.This came as a complete shock and surprise to me.I e-mailed you explaining my experience with your product and you choose to ignore me ,after numerologist E-mails to you,you replied you will get back to me within 2 days which you did not. I also E-mailed you asking for your address to send you the defective product as well as a sample off my water which you also ignored and did not reply to.

I send a e-mail to TMC(U.K) as they imported this product and with the hope that they will be able to assist me concerning this matter as they are responsibility for importing and selling the product. Unfortunately there customer support are poorer than that off Salifert and were not interested at all in my losses off my livestock and kept ignoring me *** well and made it clear to me that I must deal with you as they have no part in it and only after I put pressure on them did they contact you to deal with partly their responsibility

Lastly I do take strong offence about the format and the wording off the e-mail that you have send me.I am not an idiot and do not even try to treat me like one I know what I am doing and talking about I am in the chemical and water filtration since the age off 22 and are still into water filtration and I am 54 now .The e-mail you send me,read like you are dealing with an idiot .English is my 2nd language,Afrikaans is my first language .so my English might not be perfect but you are definitely not dealing with a child here.Since you and TMC(U.K) have such great customer support to make me out as an idiot I suppose that you will not object if I copy and paste this letter to place on the marine forums I am a member off Ultimate reef U.K,Reef Central USA,S.A marines South-Afrika and off course all the forums on facebook and I will write a letter off complaints about the customer support received from Salifert and TMC U.K to the European commission off trading standards and to Trading standards U.K and see if Watchdog U.K can assist me to make the marine keeper aware off the great help I received from the 2 companys.

Best Regards
Johan Swanepoel

 

[rwb500]

I'm not sure what you expected. Seems like you wanted them to do an analysis on their product and also your tank water, because you thought it was related to your fish dying? They probably made many thousands of bottles of the stuff with one batch of product. It's pretty easy to dismiss one person who had a bad experience.

and you didn't even post their reply?

 

[JOHANSWAN]

Here you go,it is their immediate dismissal and lack off reply that annoy me and lets be honest the last thing a person look at when their tank crash is at the additive they added.Their customer support and advicTo: johanswan@hotmail.com
salifert@gmail.com
Dear Mr. Swanepoel,

There seems to be some miscommunication probably caused by the fact that you have contacted both us (Salifert Europe bv) and Tropical Marine Centre regarding the same.

They gave you some time ago the “short answer” that nothing is wrong with Trace Hard.

We do produce and sell several supplements and test kits including Trace Hard for over 20 years.

What you described is simply impossible for many reasons but we did recheck everything immediately after your e-mail.
Nothing wrong was found. Therefore there is NO reason for us to stop sales, inform everyone and recall all the Trace Hard and a few other supplements containing in addition to other things, the same ingredients as Trace Hard.

To repeat again there is NO recall nor has one been in the past. Not in the UK nor in the rest of the world. Simply because nothing is wrong or has been wrong with Trace Hard.
Many thousand of hobbyists and professionals like store keepers use it.

Of course I feel sorry for your loss but since you are in this hobby for several years you know for sure that corals and fish die sometimes and aquariums crash or decline for both known and unknown reasons. It can e.g. be caused by ammonia spikes, chronic elevated ammonia, organics, metal parts rusting, metal parts lost in the aquarium, illness or decay of one coral or fish which can cause a chain reaction; leaving an aquarium instable for many months or even much longer. This list could go on and on.

It must have been a coincidence and not related to Trace Hard that, according to you, minutes after dosing Trace Hard two of your fish died.

If it would relate to dosing of whatever product in the dosage you mentioned, it might indicate, basing on your information, such a strong acute toxicity that your complete tank would have been wiped out completely and instantaneously at your first dose months ago.
To help visualize it compare it to dosing solid cyanide. We do not have such toxic substances in our facility.

Hopefully this aids you in understanding and visualizing that there is nothing wrong with Trace Hard and will allow you to try to pinpoint one or more of the many possible causes resulting sadly in your tank going downhill and allowing to take the right measures.


Best regards,

H. Sekha
Salifert Europe bve were zero

 

[IowaJeeping]

There is 3 sides of the story and I am not dismissing his side but I would like to see the replies from them to help see both sides. Still if no reply from him asking to sample their own product and his water goes unanswered would be no surprise and if they did sample it, it wouldnt be hard for them to say it came back fine and your water has this in it and our product dont have that in it. Please post their emails so we can see the whole story

 

[disc1]

I think you may have a nice correlation between when you used a particular bottle of their product and something that happened in your tank, but that correlation does not imply causation.

If they had a bad batch of product that needed to be recalled because it was killing tanks, surely they would be hearing from more people than just you. If nobody else is having trouble with it, then it must be something about your particular tank that caused the problem and not something with that particular batch of additive.

It is totally unfair to a supplier to blame your tank crash on them just because that was the last bottle of stuff you put in your tank unless you can prove some sort of causation.

 

[karimwassef]

The only way you can expect action is if you independently pay for an analysis of their product and compare it to the ingredients they list or a known good sample.

Even with that, you would need to demonstrate (or assert) that your tested sample was representative of what you purchased - i.e. no one slipped a copper washer or rat poison in there after you opened it, for example.

 

[rwb500]

that seemed like a perfectly reasonable and polite email (from them) to me.

 

[Gangous]

I had an issue once with 2 part from a well know company I was using a doser at time so didn't notice that anything was off until I started having issues with sps and tested my water turned out I had 2 part that was mis labeled so I was double dosing calcium and no alk
I sent the bottles back to company and they wouldn't replace my coral or anything but they did send me 3 huge boxes full of supplements at least 1500$ worth and where very apologetic I was sad because I had few thousand in sps frags that were all encrusted and growing but what could I do it was a mistake !
I do think the the company should agree to test the trace elements if the buyer ships it back in

 

[tmz]

It all begs the question of whether or not a product dosing copper , zinc and other heavy metals is of any benefit. IMO, it's not; there is plenty from food and salt mix.