Has anyone used this product?

[SteveMM62Reef]

Almost sounds too good to be true, but has good reviews.

 

[exnisstech]

too good to be true

You know what they say about that phrase Personally I would be hesitant to use it mainly because there is no listing of ingredients and no control over what and how much are being released into the water. I would rather dose alk and cal so I can control it. I use water changes for trace elements.

 

[MoshJosh]

Was interested so I googled it, found this interesting thread:

Anyone remember HBH Balance Blocks?

10yrs ago I use to be a huge user of HBH Balance Blocks that are tablets that sink and slowly dissolve releasing what they claim were 72 elements All I know is when I consistently used Balance Blocks my Zoas would grow out and take over entire rocks in like 3mos. I was like "holy crap, I'm...

www.reef2reef.com

sounds like it has worked for some users, but is likely not ideal

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

We've talked about this product for decades. Here are some of my comments from other threads:

The claims are ludicrous. Even if it did something useful, I would never support this company due to this sort of false advertising.

"Sea-Lab #28 restores and maintains the concentration of calcium, strontium and all trace elements at the same levels found in the sea, automatically. Formula #28 always works, and cannot be overdosed. This is not a slow-dissolve or time-release product. It dissolves only to replace depleted elements."

Well, I'll just reiterate that no product can do what these claim.

You may succeed in spite of them, but I strongly recommend taking a different approach where you actually have some control over the final alkalinity and calcium values attained.



It dissolves, releasing everything in it, at some rate.

It certainly does not do this:

"Sea-Lab Formula 28 is a mixture of naturally occurring buffer compounds that maintains natural ocean concentrations of calcium, strontium, and all 15 essential trace elements. "

"As elements are depleted from solution, Formula 28 delivers exactly equivalent amounts to replace them."

Curiously, it makes no mention of magnesium at all. Their "product analysis" is just a list of concentration of SOME ions in seawater. If you believe their list of ingredients, it releases those over the time it takes to dissolve. . By the time it has dissolved, it has released all of these:



Bad product then, bad product now.

it makes no more sense than to claim adding 2 ml of mystical product A and B to any reef tank every day will

“maintain natural ocean concentrations of calcium, strontium, and all 15 essential trace elements.”

 

[sUSAnR]

We don’t dose calcium- but our levels stay 420-440 with Sea Lab 28. We dose kalkwasser and magnesium baking soda.
You CAN get too much calcium with Sea Lab 28- we put too many blocks in at a time once. We have a 90 gallon display with 20 gallon sump and 20 gallon display refugium. We now keep 1 block in at all times.
YMMV
-Susan

 

[Tuan’s Reef]

This one comes up from time to time and you'll get arguments from both sides . The claims are absurd but many says it works. lol

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Glad people are happy, but I would never recommend using a product that outright lies in advertising.

 

[biom]

We don’t dose calcium- but our levels stay 420-440 with Sea Lab 28. We dose kalkwasser and magnesium baking soda.

If you dose kalkwasser you definitely dose calcium. Kalkwasser is one of the best balanced calcium and alkalinity supplements. Never heard of “magnesium” baking soda but if you are dosing magnesium if needed is also good

 

[MrGisonni]

This product has been around for decades. No reefers used it because it had high concentrations of copper. Maybe it has been tweaked since then.