5.5.3.2.6. Safe Cannot be Made into Prime

Seachem makes two water conditioners, Prime and Safe. Seachem also makes a series of marketing claims for these products which are pure hogwash. This article examines one of those claims.

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False claim #6, Safe Cannot be Made into Prime.

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Since both Safe and Prime are simply sodium dithionite, the idea that Safe cannot be made into Prime is a little ridiculous, to put it mildly. But be that as it may a test was developed for looking at this claim by Seachem.

Test

The claim has been made by several on social media that Prime has certain “stabilizers” in it which prevent it from decomposing. The claim is also made that the dry conditioner that is Safe does not have stabilizers in it and as such will decompose and become inactive after a month or two in solution. I.e. Safe cannot be made into Prime. So we decided to test the stability of a solution of Safe.

A solution of Safe which was equivalent to Prime was made up using distilled water (40 grams Safe in one liter of water). This solution was then titrated with a standardized purple potassium permanganate solution. The purple color of the permanganate will be removed by the active ingredients in Safe, giving a clear solution. When the drops of permanganate leave a light purple color which doesn’t leave even after swirling, the Safe solution has been inactivated.

The solution of Safe was tested four times immediately after being made up and the Safe neutralized 13, 11, 12, and 13 drops of permanganate. Then the Safe was left in an open bottle in a warm garage (80 to 90 degrees) for four months and retested with a new standardized permanganate solution. After four months the Safe solution neutralized 12, 13, 14 and 11 drops of permanganate.

These eight tests showed that Safe can indeed be made into a solution of Prime and stored for at least a four month period with very little reduction in its efficacy. Again, this is a very easy test anyone who is interested can easily duplicate.

Prime and Safe both decompose in water to form quantities of sulfur dioxide gas. Sulfur dioxide gas has a sulfurous sewage smell.  Sulfur dioxide gas also can irritate the gills of the fish. In sufficient quantity it can even kill the fish.

This gives the hobbyist three good reasons not to use Prime or Safe:

• No one wants a smelly tank
• No one wants the gills of their fish to be irritated
• No one should want to support a company making false claims

Note that to make Prime from Safe simply add 40 grams of Safe to one liter of distilled water.

Other False Claims

In addition to the claim that Prime cannot be made from Safe, Seachem goes on to make the following false claims about Prime and Safe:

• Prime and Safe detoxify ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate.

• Prime and Safe used during cycling won’t affect the cycle time.

• Prime and Safe are not both sodium dithionite

• Only Prime and Safe remove chloramine, other conditioners are not effective with chloramines.

• Prime is 5x more concentrated than competing products

All of these claims are nothing more than snake oil marketing hype with no more validity than the late night commercials for hair loss products or virility enhancing pills. To go to an article proving each claim false simply click on the link on the false claim. All of these claims are proven false by testing delineated in each of the articles.

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