Good points!
I'm terrible at making up analogies I guess. LOL Lemme see if I can make it worse. ;) The point of the gasoline example was that the process of making gasoline is wholly unrelated to the process of driving a car. So, I would never recommend a newb driver to get involved with making gasoline as a part of their learning to drive. (Even if it would save them money and even if it were not very difficult.) Likewise, the process of handling, mixing, etc doesn't help (and may complicate) the learning of testing/dosing and what the chemicals being dosed are all about. All in good time - first things first. That's all!
The kalk/pickling lime (e.g. Kalk +2) I mentioned in my last post. These are the natural "contaminants" that come from the mined lime itself. Do we want to be mad/suspicious at Brightwell for putting it on the label, or the rest of the brands for leaving it off? Personally I can't begrudge a company their marketing latitude if that's their worst "sin". And it doesn't change the product - the fact is that nobody doses kalk for the Sr or Mg content so to me it's not relevant. (If they did, they would have to dose "milky kalk" which practically nobody does.) And something strange I've noticed about pickling lime is that there are
no stores around here, grocery or otherwise, that carry any lime. Not Mrs. Wages and not another brand. I have found no local, non-LFS sources for kalk and I'm in a major metro area! I pay about $16/pound instead of what should be
$3-$4 per pound as a result. Thankfully the stuff lasts forever unlike two-part ingredients. Lastly,
here's a good link that gives a little more perspective on the contaminants one may think they are avoiding, but in fact may not be able to avoid. Among other things, both foods and dosing chemicals are both addressed specifically. Interesting!
I think Superbuffer might actually be one of the the other products I was referring to above that actually have no good info or even misleading/bad info in the instructions. Probably no info on the concentration and instruction something like "Dose 5 mL per gallon once a week" or something equally lame-brained. Nothing about theory or method of testing - nothing useful or helpful.
Interesting quote from the Boron article linked in the post above (emphasis mine): "Another series of products that
should contain boron are the two-part calcium and alkalinity supplements[...]" Of course that section is followed by a bunch of "we don't know much about Boron" statements as expected, but still interesting that it's true to the extent they mentioned.
Also, it's not that mixing chemicals is "hard". It's that someone who has no idea (yet) about testing or dosing doesn't really need to be worrying about something unrelated (measuring, handling, mixing etc) when they should be learning just the testing and dosing. If the newb is a genius and wants to do it all - no problem! But the truth of the matter is that many people end up with tanks in bad shape and even dead corals because they get excited about dosing and try to "do it" before they "learn it".
As far as material handling... Calcium is easy, but it's one of the exceptions. Baking soda doesn't usually cooperate with funnels too well and can puff up into clouds pretty easily, which is both a mess and a breathing hazard. Likewise for funnel and the Mg Chloride half of the dual component Magnesium. Same for kalk - it doesn't flow well but packs like baking soda but worse and has the same breathing hazard issue.
There are better ways to deal with these chemicals, but it takes time to figure those out and again I don't consider this a good way to divide the newb's attention when they should be learning the fundamentals of testing with their test kits and understanding what alkalinity is instead. This is already a tall order, especially the understanding alkalinity part, so there's no good reason IMO to rush these things.
-Matt
