Phosbond question

[Spare time]

@Randy Holmes-Farley Do you know if phosbond, which from my understanding is aluminum oxide coated in gfo, can leach aluminum similar to aluminum oxide phosphate removers? I couldn't find anything on this so I wanted to see what you thought

 

[BAMatter]

Scroll down to the FAQ’s

Seachem - PhosBond

www.seachem.com

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

It's picture looks more like a mixture than a fully coated material. In general, I would not assume it prevents aluminum release.

Seachem - PhosBond

www.seachem.com

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Scroll down to the FAQ’s

Seachem - PhosBond

www.seachem.com

"In recent years, there has been speculation that aluminum oxide based phosphate removers like PhosBond™ release aluminum into the water and subsequently damage corals. The evidence to support this claim was largely anecdotal."

OMG, how totally disingenuous of them. Makes me want to throw up.

I did the experiments myself (an expert chemist using a state of the art ICP machine myself) and debated them endlessly with the owner of Seachem in a public forum, doing additional experiments at their request. He finally admitted he could not see anything wrong with my experiments that showed it did release aluminum.

OTOH, their own "experiments", at least the ones they touted at the time, did not even have enough sensitivity to detect the aluminum that I was detecting, so they made the ridiculous claim that none was released.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

OMG, it is still there in the report they tout at tha tlink. Wow, seriously ignorant, or worse.

"The detection limit for this analysis (inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrometry) was 0.2 mg/L."

lol

Set the detection limit high enough and you won't find sodium or chloride in seawater either. lol

 

[BAMatter]

"In recent years, there has been speculation that aluminum oxide based phosphate removers like PhosBond™ release aluminum into the water and subsequently damage corals. The evidence to support this claim was largely anecdotal."

OMG, how totally disingenuous of them. Makes me want to throw up.

I did the experiments myself (an expert chemist using a state of the art ICP machine myself) and debated them endlessly with the owner of Seachem in a public forum, doing additional experiments at their request. He finally admitted he could not see anything wrong with my experiments that showed it did release aluminum.

OTOH, their own "experiments", at least the ones they touted at the time, did not even have enough sensitivity to detect the aluminum that I was detecting, so they made the ridiculous claim that none was released.

Do you have a link to that discussion? Always interested to learn more, especially when it goes against what’s published online.

 

[Spare time]

OMG, it is still there in the report they tout at tha tlink. Wow, seriously ignorant, or worse.

"The detection limit for this analysis (inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrometry) was 0.2 mg/L."

lol

Set the detection limit high enough and you won't find sodium or chloride in seawater either. lol

Randy your (well deserved) rants against different reef chem companies is one of my favorite things to read hahaha

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Do you have a link to that discussion? Always interested to learn more, especially when it goes against what’s published online.

I'll look. Some was in my forum at Reef Central, but I think more of it with Greg Morin was in the Seachem forum at Reefcentral (IIRC), and that may have disappeared. Maybe I can find it via the Wayback machine/Internet archive.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Here are two discussion threads where Seachem (Gregory Morin, owner) participated.

The first is reviewing my article:

Aluminum and Aluminum-based phosphate binders: Likely a Problem - Reef Central Online Community Archives

Aluminum and Aluminum-based phosphate binders: Likely a Problem The Reef Chemistry Forum

archive.reefcentral.com

The second one showed some data that I obtained at the request of Gregory to do more experiments with a smaller amount of Phosguard to water ratio, closer to what folks use.:

New Aluminum Release Data for Phosguard - Reef Central Online Community Archives

New Aluminum Release Data for Phosguard The Reef Chemistry Forum

archive.reefcentral.com

At the end of the second one, Gregory Morin says:

"That's obviously a disappointing result but I can't argue with your technique this time. All of our data indicates that aluminum oxide should be completely insoluble, so this certainly warrants further investigation to determine the cause of even this small amount being leached."

They then did the "study" they published on their web site, and it says it has a detection limit of 0.2 ppm. The levels I reported in the original article were below that (0.25 ppm unfiltered and 0.16 ppm filtered), and the repeat experiment was above (0.4 ppm). To say their study shows "none" when my study showed some but less than they can detect seems misleading to me.