I am hoping to discover a bit more information about Seachem Focus and its uses. It looks like the majority of the members on this forum that use Seachem Focus (including @Humblefish and @HotRocks ) use it primarily as a "binder" to attach other medications to food and prevent them from being lost into the water. After going through Seachem's information on their Focus product, I am unsure how this product works. It appears that the active ingredient is Nitrofurantoin (an antibiotic), which should not have any inherent "binding" properties on its own. That being said, there are other ingredients, but none of those are listed in the SDS and I therefore cannot evaluate their use as a medication binder.
The website does say this about Focus, "Focus™ is primarily intended to be mixed with food and/or other medications to make them palatable to fish and greatly reduce the loss of medication to the water through diffusion." I believe most of the members on this forum take that to mean that Focus will bind other medications to the food and will limit their diffusion into the water column. I wonder, however, if the true purpose of that statement is to say that it will greatly reduce the loss of Nitrofuratoin into the water column. This could be simply because you are soaking it in the food, rather than attempting to dissolve it in the water for a bath treatment. It could also be because the active ingredient is a "polymer bound nitrofuratoin." So maybe binding nitrofuratoin to this polymer makes it less likely to diffuse into the water. The only other statement of interest that I could find on this subject was in their FAQ section. The question was, "Can Focus™ be used as medication alone?" The answer was, "Focus™ is an antibacterial polymer for internal infections of fish. It is intended to be used with other medications to help bind the medication to the food source." This seems a little more clear that the purpose is to bind other medications to food. My main problem though is that I was unable to find any additional information on how the product works as a binder, or what ingredient in the product may allow it to bind other medications to the food.
Does anyone have more information on this subject? Keep in mind that I am not trying to make any waves here. I am simply interested in how this product works as a binder.
The website does say this about Focus, "Focus™ is primarily intended to be mixed with food and/or other medications to make them palatable to fish and greatly reduce the loss of medication to the water through diffusion." I believe most of the members on this forum take that to mean that Focus will bind other medications to the food and will limit their diffusion into the water column. I wonder, however, if the true purpose of that statement is to say that it will greatly reduce the loss of Nitrofuratoin into the water column. This could be simply because you are soaking it in the food, rather than attempting to dissolve it in the water for a bath treatment. It could also be because the active ingredient is a "polymer bound nitrofuratoin." So maybe binding nitrofuratoin to this polymer makes it less likely to diffuse into the water. The only other statement of interest that I could find on this subject was in their FAQ section. The question was, "Can Focus™ be used as medication alone?" The answer was, "Focus™ is an antibacterial polymer for internal infections of fish. It is intended to be used with other medications to help bind the medication to the food source." This seems a little more clear that the purpose is to bind other medications to food. My main problem though is that I was unable to find any additional information on how the product works as a binder, or what ingredient in the product may allow it to bind other medications to the food.
Does anyone have more information on this subject? Keep in mind that I am not trying to make any waves here. I am simply interested in how this product works as a binder.
