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Wonder Shell and package claims


Emika_B
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Aloha all!  My brain's been melted by my KH journey and I was pondering the Wonder Shell package.  It states, "removes chlorine instantly," "a water purifier" and "cleans cloudy water."  How?  If it removes chlorine, does that mean I don't need to add treatment to my water?  Have you ever used yours to "scour inner glass walls...to remove scum and to deter its return" or noticed your fish are especially frisky and reproducing more?  Don't get me wrong, I think it's a great product; I'm just curious if anyone uses it as more than just a pH, GH, KH helper?

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Aloha! Pray tell, what's been your KH journey? Would I presume correctly that your water is very low KH / extremely soft? 

As for Wonder Shells . . . hmm . . . nope, just heard of them used to buffer water. It's possible they have other properties, but without external verification or personal experience I'm skeptical. 

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Aloha Fish Folk - My GH has been at least 300 ppm (that’s as high as the test strips go), pH at 7.2-ish and KH has been basically 0.  Steady for shy of 2 weeks now.  I’ve been trying to raise KH using the Wonder Shells, but it seems that it’s more help on the GH side.  While pondering the value of rescaping with crushed coral I got to reading the Wonder Shell packaging.  I think my favorite claim was to use it on the glass to scrub away scum.  I’m tempted to use it on my shower door 🙂

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Cory - Mahalo for your reply.  I’ll probably leave the the small shells for the snails - they seem to like them.  I’ve got 1 to 1 1/2 cups of crushed coral in one of the fluidized filters (replaced the media with a bag of coral).  So far it doesn’t seem to have had much of an effect so I’ll give it a few more days and see what happens.  I’ll probably be doing guppies since my parameters look to be what they’d like, but I want to have a bit more buffer for the pH, just in case.  If that means rescaping then so be it.

P.S. - I’ve been watching the videos and previous livestreams and have learned a lot.  Thanks for the hard work of you and your team!

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9 hours ago, Emika_B said:

Aloha Fish Folk - My GH has been at least 300 ppm (that’s as high as the test strips go), pH at 7.2-ish and KH has been basically 0.  Steady for shy of 2 weeks now.  I’ve been trying to raise KH using the Wonder Shells, but it seems that it’s more help on the GH side.  While pondering the value of rescaping with crushed coral I got to reading the Wonder Shell packaging.  I think my favorite claim was to use it on the glass to scrub away scum.  I’m tempted to use it on my shower door 🙂

You're not alone! I have about the same situation. Soft, neutral water from the tap (lucky me!) but to keep my livebearers and snails as happy as I can, I scatter a small handful (guessing about 1/4 cup) of crushed coral around the clearer spots of gravel with every water change. This is in addition to the bed of crushed coral I put in a HOB filter and the medium-size wonder shell for my 36g. It can get the GH up to about 150-200 ppm, but my KH is still at like 10-20 ppm. I figure the plants are also sucking up carbon at an alarming rate. So, sadly, Wonder Shell will about as effective as crushed coral in raising KH. Haven't tried it on the shower though! LOL would probably be easier to just make a baking soda paste, though.

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I thought the packaging claims sounded pretty strange as well! I've just been using it in conjunction with crushed coral to help my snails; I'm trying to make perfect snail shells. :3 I don't use HOBs, just sponge filters, and I wanted to control how much is in there until I figured out how much I need, so I put 1/2 cup in some panty hose and made two little bundles of it. One is on top of the sponge (and it looks ugly, but I'll hide it eventually) and the other is hidden behind some rocks. It's been two weeks, and my 29 gallon has gone from 3 KH to 4, GH from 8 to 10, and Ph from 7.6 to 7.8. So far so good. I'll keep monitoring it to see if it continues to rise or see whenever it levels out.

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H.K. Luterman - Isn’t funny how useful pantyhose can be?  I’m glad to hear you’re getting results.  My original plan was to let the tank do its thing for at least a month before adding fish, though I did want to add shrimp soon.  Gotta get the KH up a bit more before I’m comfortable risking little shrimpy lives, let alone fish.  Hope your numbers go the way you want soon!

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 1/26/2021 at 11:55 AM, Emika_B said:

Isn’t funny how useful pantyhose can be?

I have been spending wayyyy to much on aquarium goodies lately 🤑, and was hoping that I could use pantyhose instead of media bags, haha!!  So, I searched up crushed coral and stumbled on this thread.

If I read correctly, I think @H.K.Luterman used pantyhose around Wonder Shells? (I probably read that very wrong)...but, do y'all think they'd work for putting crushed coral in a HOB filter?  Or, would the holes in the pantyhose be too small?

I want to try adding crushed coral to my tank for my snail boyz (they might be ladies...they're probably ladies...but it's fun to say boyz)...especially since my pH is lower because of the driftwood and I am definitely not going to mix it into my dark substrate.  (The things we do for beauty! 🙄🤣)

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4 minutes ago, Betsy said:

I have been spending wayyyy to much on aquarium goodies lately 🤑, and was hoping that I could use pantyhose instead of media bags, haha!!  So, I searched up crushed coral and stumbled on this thread.

If I read correctly, I think @H.K.Luterman used pantyhose around Wonder Shells? (I probably read that very wrong)...but, do y'all think they'd work for putting crushed coral in a HOB filter?  Or, would the holes in the pantyhose be too small?

I want to try adding crushed coral to my tank for my snail boyz (they might be ladies...they're probably ladies...but it's fun to say boyz)...especially since my pH is lower because of the driftwood and I am definitely not going to mix it into my dark substrate.  (The things we do for beauty! 🙄🤣)

I fill up little panty hose bundles filled with crushed coral and set them on my sponge filters as a way to add carbonate hardness into my water. Here's a pic.

PXL_20210206_163555445.jpg.9b0dfa70a5a2a13c0423ee98e3b61860.jpg

Kinda ugly! This one isn't as well hidden by plants as my others. You can hide them better in HOBs. The thinking is that I can better control how much crushed coral I use this way instead of just adding it to the substrate. If I want to remove some, I can just take out the little panty hose bundle. 

Wondershells I put directly into my tank, somewhere in the front so I can see how fast they're dissolving. 

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I had seen some positive reviews for wonder shells. I got a three pack and threw one in the tank. After if had dissolved completely my shrimp seemed to be more active. Not sure if it had to do with them getting comfortable in the tank or the chemistry change. 

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Betsy - I didn’t want to mix the crushed coral (aragonite in my case) in my substrate - it’s just so white against the dark brown of my substrate.  Even Wonder Shells are crazy white but at least they dissolve away in time.  I still want to scrub one against my shower door, though 😉

Ryan F - I hope your shrimp are happy with their Wonder Shells.  My snails seemed to like them.

Hobbit - I loved that meme!

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I have hard water to start with and had never heard of Wonder Shells until several came with the used aquarium I recently purchased.  I read the packaging--the reproductive enhancing in particular made my family laugh--and thought "this sounds totally fake!" so I let my daughter paint them as decorations for her room. 

Then, what do I start seeing on videos and forums?  Wonder Shells!  I don't need them with my water, but I've gotten a kick out of the fact that they ARE a real and useful product despite the very "quackery" sounding label!  Not sure if I just didn't pay attention before that because they're always referenced with soft-water or what, but they keep popping up now!  

Here's an example of how the ones in MY house look!  Whoops!

WIN_20210206_19_05_22_Pro.jpg

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