Many of you have now seen the long list of supplements that you can buy at your local fish store. The so called ‘newcomer’ to this meet is Chris Brightwell’s ‘Brightwell Aquatics’ brand of reef products. As a former Kent chemist, he managed to produce a long list of additives, which now include Phosphate-E, MicroBacter7, MaxAmino, and others.
But in some recent discussion with our popular reef chemist Randy Holmes-Farley, we found that his sentiment on Brightwell’s products isn’t so favorable. From a pure chemistry standpoint, Randy argues that most of his products are not balanced. When asked what he thought about BA’s 2 Part, he stated:
No, I do not recommend the Brightwell two part. It is deficient in magnesium by their own claimed values. They do not seem to understand how to make an appropriate balanced two part, despite the fact that I’ve published how much magnesium one should have in it and why.
That said, I can’t be sure any other commercial one is correct either, since I know of no others that report the amount of magnesium in them.
However, a low calcium problem is more likely to be caused by a low calcium salt mix or inadequate dosing than a problem with the two part being used.
I’ll share my two huge thumbs down, both for Chris, his poor products, and his marketing gimmicks that mislead reefers.
They have some terrible products with misleading marketing.
I’m glad you like some of them, but others are not so good.
Interesting comments from a very respected chemist, and a industry-head. So if you do find that Brightwell Aquatics’s products work for you, let us know. It is like anything in this hobby, some thing work for some, some not for others. I wonder what his opinion would be on Kent or Seachem?
Related posts:
- Products We Don’t Endorse: A Dynamic List
- Hanna Instruments To Release More Products
- Poll-y Friday
- Reefy News: The Great Barrier Reef Edition
- The red line
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