Organic Aquariums

Hi

I was talking to Steve at the show about the organic aquarium products, he was very convincing.

Anybody else use this?

He had a marine tank there that didn't have half a ton of equipment hanging off it which looked ok.

Any thoughts?

thanks

Yes it looks like it is worth a try. I am going to have a go withone of my tanks shortly, only then will I be convinced.


Daragh

My mate uses the stuff,set up a rio400 and had discus in it within 24hrs.That was about july-augustish last year,no problems at all with yet,only filter is the bog standard internal juwel.He had a small motoro ray in there until he gets his bigger tank set up,it died after about 6mths,unkown cause,but it was in good health until then.
I think for now I will just stick to water changes.

Not to be a fly in the ointment but if my tanks looked as dirty as his then I must have been dead for over a month.
Both tanks looked like a weak cup of tea.
Talking about tea, organic aqua is not my cup of tea. I nearly wanted to do a water change on his tanks while I was there.

In fairness Anthony they were both only set up the evening before and with all there own water, rather than the sparkly clean tap water in all the other tanks. I did not pay much attention to the cichlids but the marines went in and seemed happy enough. If they were in place a few more days I think they would have cleared a bit more.

I will definitely try it, if for no other reason than to see if it works or not. I doubt no matter how good it is I would ever be using it on all my tanks, I would need to win the lotto first.


Daragh

I tried it about a year ago. Yes it works, but what annoyed me was having to pay €15 per month for a fix of the stuff. It saves on water changes as you only have to do them monthly, but there is a cost involved.

I only used it for a couple of months and then cycled my tank. It's also supposed to eliminate algae, but I didn't use it long enough to verify that.

Personally, I like to manage my water the real organic way - through water changes! I keep my tank additives to dechlorinator and meds when absolutely necessary.

I have never used it but being there when he filled the tanks and seeing the progression of the tank and the fish during the night nd the next day the fish were less stressed then mine and they coloured up almost straight away. The sea horses took a bit longer but within 12 - 16 hours they looked like they had been in there for ever. I found that part of it impressive. As Daragh said if the tanks were runnign for longer they would have cleared up altogheter.

I agree with Ken.
Even allowing that the tank was just set up it was still too dirty for me.
It was set up on Saturday and still filthy looking Sunday when I was leaving. I will stear well clear.
Heres to getting your hands wet.

Never heard of this organic stuff, but I'll never use it.
I dislike putting anything into my tanks other than water, natural decor and fish. Hell, I cringe at putting the red plant feed into my water.

The water from my water changes is never wasted.
Yes I might use more than my neighbour but my 'dirty' water goes to feeding the grass and the plants!!!

I used it for about 4 months. i went to brazil for a month last year so had to get someone to feed the fish every day so it was perfect for that.. just gave them instructions on what to put in and when.. and came back to a perfect tank.

The reason i came off because...

1) My tank was heavily stocked and my nitrates were huge because i was using an external canister filter packed with media.. i didnt realise that you could get rid of all the rest of the media and just fill it with filter floss to trap the particles but that there was no need for the extra biological filtration. I couldnt bring myself to wash it under the cold tap!

2) The ph had a tendancy to drop. My coral gravel was old and not buffering as much as before.. so i couldnt figure out why my fish were flicking and got rid of the organics quicksmart to try to do as many water changes as possible.. only then did i invest in gH and kH testkits.. and my tap water is rediculously soft..

3) Airpumps are just noisy.. i had two airpumps going in the tank
granted they were cheapo ones.. but still.. no noisy for a sitting room.


other than that i found it good.. but if water changes is your thing then i'd say that that's even better.

if i had not seen it being set up from start to finish i would not believe it. i had heard a lot about this product but was sceptical. i certainly intend to give it a try.

Sounds like something I might use when I'm taking the family to Orlando in November and I don't think I'll get my neighbour to do waterchanges. What is the stuff called and does anybody know if there's a stockist the Cork/Munster region?
I'd like to give it a try before going away. If something went wrong I could intervene rather than using the stuff first time when I go on holidays

I am afraid I did not get over for the show, what is this product made of and who does it work, resin?, organic?.

www.fishfx.net/organics/

Another link

www.organicaquariums.co.za/

Apparently it's cheaper to buy on the net.

Apparently it's cheaper to buy on the net.

Oh, there is something new

I rember the last time I went to the ideal home exhibition, I came home with all sorts of invisible pens, DIY painting sets, and miracle fruit skin removers, after a couple of years I expected every one including professional painters would be using these revolutionary painting techniques, and all hotels and restaurants would have a similar miracle fruit skinner remover. Naturally all these products I got were gimmicks,, the way the organic aquarium is marketed has parallels to the other gimmicks, O.K if you have a goldfish bowl without a filter I can see an application for this product, but on the whole this product is gimmicky.

I rember in the mid 80´s I imported a large box of a similar product over from the U.K and brought it to the ITFS in Ballsbridge and sold every one, there was not repeat orders, and the product disappeared off the market.

One gets the feeling some one is making this in the back garden shed, and probally completely set up the business with professional labels on bottles for less than 6,000Euros, its very similar to Peckham natural spring water.

The claims:

This Treatment:
• Is made from carefully selected non-toxic plant materials.Yes, but is probally just dried tree leaves collected last autumn from the local park
• Cleans & dissolves all waste materials & decaying matter, biologically.Yes, but some filter wool from another tank would of done that faster • Reduces & neutralizes toxic gases such as ammonia, nitrites, nitrates & phosphates (the general peaks in the nitrogen cycle). Means the same as above• Releases & neutralizes toxic gases from the under layer & water, ensuring a
“toxic-gas free” system.Again saying the same thing using different words
• Acts against fungi. Its possible the leaves releases anti fungi • Controls and reduces algae growth. If the put barely hay in its possible
• Clears cloudy water. So does adding old filter wool
• Releases natural soluble oils & essences immediately into the water. If I will get a set of invisible pens I accept thatt :wink:
• Is Healthy for fish & plants. :roll:
• Helps to build up the fish immune system.That's hard to prove unless you had 20 test tanks and 20 controls • Releases up to 80% more oxygen into the water. Now that the nail in the coffin, bacteria are suppose to use up 80% of the oxygen (non trickle filtered standard tank), unless the system was rely in zeolite to by past the entire biological process that claim of 80% is the nail in the coffin, if they said it slighly increases the oxygen I could not engage in an argument but claiming 80% sounds like its coming form the CEO of the 6,000E chemical multi national company.

There's a new LFS in Ashbourne running their tanks on this. Be interesting to see how they get along.

I reset up a tank for a person in Donabate from scratch using safe start.
I was asked to test the product so what better way than in someones elses tank. Anyway. Its 2 weeks now and no fish loses. I have not been to test the water but all seems well.
Touch wood.

sean
this stuff does seem to work, i dont know how but i'm going to try it.
like yourself i have seen lots of gimmicky products come and go, and was initially sceptical about this seemingly miraculous product. but having closely observed the on site demonstration and spoken to people who use it (in the trade, and also expert fishkeepers), i now intend to give it a try with a small marine tank. then i will give my verdict. you too should give it a go, and then we can compare notes.

The way I'm thinking this could be a shortcut* into marine tanks.

I don't have the several hundred, if not thousand of euro to set up a decent sized marine tank, but a small initial outlay with an ongoing cost of €15 per month or so would not cause too much panic, about an hour and a halfs worth of pub expenditure.

Plus the missus is half on board with this one. Nemo and Marlon could be coming home.

*And I mean shortcut without the bad connotations, only the good ones.

derek, in order to test it properly on a marine setup imo i wouldnt add any live rock.

Agreed. As per Steven when I was talking to him there is no other form or filtration at all. He was just running filter floss in the juwel internal and definitely absolutely nothing else at all. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Nix.

Eff All.

thanks fran, i'll keep that in mind

That's true. And you rinse the filter wool under that tap (yes the tap!) at every water change. Normal biological filtration will interfere with the OA process.

There's no way, I am going to accept this unless I get some more technical explanation, I have looked at their web site, and tells me very little, except for its made form dried leaves, Holger or some one else technical please explain the differences of the entire biological process that deviates this to a normal cycle. I feel this thread is starting of just like the beefheart forum thread, there no way I will accept " a few shops have tried it with success" for me is not a good enough answer, by the way I just looked at the address it is a garden shed in South Africa, correction a P.O Box, not one real physical address, please all of you search your feeling coming over to the dark side and you will see its a con, I feel bad saying this because I sold plastic bags 8inch by 2 by 2 with tiny privation holes that float in the tank full of dried out leaves and give of "beneficial Bullock"in the 80´s at ther ITFS meetings, the same thing packaged another way. Please do not beleive everything you read, I talk about Beefheart in the 80`s at the ITFS, and was consider a radical of my ideas, a decent company has a real addressee.

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Just took a minute to read through the marketing blabber. Doesn't make sense to me. I have no idea how the airpump can be the main component of the filtration and that you basically have to destroy your beneficial filter bacteria.
no chemicals-even if a substance is not man-made it is still a chemical. A common marketing gag that should be made illegal.
All the food labelling is the same mess anyway

ok my last comment on this is i'm going to try it and then express an opinion

My thoughts exactly. Hell they still don't know how Barley Straw works, if it works it works so I am not worried which tree the leaves came from etc.

Daragh

here is a link to anohter thread on cichlid forum. someone set up 2 tanks one running on organic aqua and another as a control.. 17 pages but worth a read..

www.cichlid-forum.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=90943