Pet Habitat South Africa

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02 Jan 2019

Beware Of Fake MarinePure In South Africa

Posted By : Guest

Fake MarinePure has now hit the South African aquarium market. A local online website specializing in marine aquatics describes the counterfeit product, renamed bacteria balls, to offer the following benefits:

Designed for Ammonia and Nitrite Removal
Primarily designed to provide deep anaerobic zones for de-nitrification in passive systems.
Live rock substitute-popular among reef hobbyists as a substitute for live rock because it reduces nitrates more efficiently without harming the environment.
Use in sumps, stacked in extra-large filters.
Perfect for in-sump use to cultivate Bacteria

This product description was copied word for word from MarinePure website. The photo for the product is a photo of genuine MarinePure product.

Over the past few years this has been a huge problem for CerMedia LLC the manufacturer of MarinePure in USA, because these fake MarinePure lookalike media that originate from China have appeared in Australia, UK, USA and many other countries. They are marketed as MarinePure and when the customer receives the product they are disappointed with the results in their aquarium. And all the complaints are normally directed to CerMedia in USA.

One of the biggest complaints from reef keepers is that fake MarinePure leaks aluminum into their aquarium which may be toxic to some corals. Poly-Filter manufactured by Poly-Bio-Marine has also been the target by unscrupulous Chinese manufacturers who have been making fake lookalike Poly-Filter media for many years.

How To Distinguish Fake From Real MarinePure™

MarinePure was invented by a company called NanoDynamics that uses state of the art ceramic process technology to produce a substrate that is designed for beneficial bacteria to flourish. NanoDynamics changed to CerMedia LLC in 2009 and their products are used in all water and gas environments from fish tanks to large industrial systems. MarinePure is the perfect place for beneficial bacteria to flourish in order to remove harmful fish wastes. It will eliminate ammonia and lower nitrates. MarinePure's bio-media is the most technically advanced bio-media available today because it features Thin Bio-Film Technology.

Bio-Film Technology is the combination of vast surface area and open/interconnected pores allowing a thin bio-film to develop. This thin film allows bacteria to flourish because necessary nutrients are immediately available. With the open pores, old dead bio-film is easily flushed from the media and will not plug the media. Water flows through the media, not around as with other denser media, thus utilizing the most surface area for beneficial bacterial growth. Fake MarinePure does not have this interconnecting porous structure. When you cut it in half it is mostly solid from inside.

Why Use Genuine MarinePure?

Better value due to high performance
Reduced tank maintenance
Allows for higher fish loads
Can use a smaller filtration footprint
More consistent water chemistry
Easy to shape

The Aluminum Issue in Fake MarinePure

MarinePure™ has been used for many years as the bio-filtration choice for high end reef systems. MarinePure routinely receive reports of success for meeting and exceeding hobbyist’s and professional’s bio-filtration needs, which in turn have contributed to stable and healthy reef aquariums. MarinePure were surprised to learn in 2017 that several forum discussions have alluded to the possibility of MarinePure contributing to elevated aluminum levels in their tanks. MarinePure have had public aquariums and other experts confirm to them, following their extensive scientific in-house testing, they are not experiencing elevated aluminum or any other problems with their use of MarinePure.

How your system is set up and the chemistry is managed are critical in developing and maintaining a healthy reef environment. Careful consideration should always be given as to what levels of aluminum, pH and other chemistry is required for your reef environment.

CerMedia takes pride in its MarinePure product and believes in a scientific, professional approach using facts to back-up their statements. They made the decision to test several samples to look at the aluminum issue. Recently, Triton GmbH implemented an innovative testing program allowing individual hobbyists to check the chemistry of their own systems, and its relationship to the “ideal levels” of individual elements to make up a healthy reef environment (more info about them http://www.triton-lab.de/en/ ).

MarinePure decided that Triton, due to their popularity among Reefers, would be the best option to test levels of aluminum in tanks that were using MarinePure. Please note that these were blind test samples and Triton did not know they were sent from MarinePure facility. The test method Triton uses is called Inductively Coupled Plasma – Optical Emission Spectrometry (ICP-OES). This method will measure any compound containing the aluminum as the aluminum atom. It does this by breaking the compound down into its fundamental elements. In a natural reef eco-system, there are already vast amounts of Aluminum. In fact, aluminum composes over 8% of the earth’s crust as rocks and minerals. Virtually all of this aluminum is combined with oxygen or other elements and is inert in a reef environment.

CerMedia fires MarinePure in order to bind any free aluminum with oxygen, thus making it inert. It is quite possible that some or all of the elevated aluminum being measured by Triton are in the harmless forms. There are ceramic bio-media products on the market that are not fired, with claims that these products do not leach aluminum because they have not been fired. This statement goes against basic chemistry rules and logic. The compounds used in making MarinePure media, when fired in an oxidizing environment, will chemically bind within the ceramic matrix, much like rocks and minerals found in natural environments. This makes them harmless when used in normal aquarium water. This is the reason why MarinePure makes the extra investment in firing all their products, thereby providing superior value.

Based on Triton test results, the aluminum amounts are significantly higher from the unfired ceramic bio-media product compared to the MarinePure product, certainly outside of variations of the Triton test itself. The results from these tests clearly showed that CerMedia’s fired media is the better choice when compared to unfired aluminum based ceramic products. To see the actual test reports you can visit website www.cermedia.com

The fake MarinePure lookalike products were found to release high levels of aluminum and not the genuine MarinePure media. Aluminum in a reef aquarium can come from many different sources, and in many different forms, some potentially harmful, and some harmless. The hobbyists should investigate all additions to their systems if elevated aluminum is a concern. CerMedia believes MarinePure does not add harmful aluminum to reef systems.

Make sure you buy genuine, authentic MarinePure products. The cheaper Chinese products may look the same, and are marketed the same as MarinePure but are not manufactured in the same way as MarinPure and they do not have the same volume to surface area ratio.

Yes, the fake MarinePure will work as biological media because bacteria will grow on any surface in your aquarium, but it will most likely have the same surface area as standard plastic bioballs. There is no science behind the making of MarinePure lookalike products. The whole purpose why these products are made is to deceive customers into thinking they bought the genuine MarinePure product.