Cocktail Conditioners wetmanNY??

[beviking]

I've seen "cocktail conditioners" mentioned several times and it seems to have a negative vibe to it. I've often wondered about conditioners that "add a protective coat" vs. ones that "triggers fish's own protective coat". Would you (wetmanNY or any other) care to explain the underlying vibe of the aforementioned phrase? More importantly, would you recommend Amquel over others? Oh, wait, let me go get a cup of tea... I mean coffee...make it a carafe.:)
Wait, is "carafe" a french word? A thermos, get me a D**N THERMOS!! :mad:
Should this be in newbie forum???

[wetmanNY]

Typical wetman sarky sneer, eh? I'm irritated by cocktails with unidentified ingredients that are meant to do "everything" to your water...

I'm always doing searches to find out the ingredients of stuff I'm supposed to put in my aquaria. Sometimes I can't find out. I hate that...

What do you folks think?

[OrionGirl]

I am not a fan of any conditioners that affect the slime coat of the fish. To begin with, you can't convince me that the slime coat is a single substance (certainly not aloe), nor that all fish carry the same coat around. Conditioners that claim to stimulate the slime coat do so by irritating the fish--kind of like stimulating you to utilize more anti-coagulants by scratching your arm. Might work, but I'm not convinced that a thicker slime coat is always a good thing, given the variability of uses by different fish. I distrust products that use the shot gun approach, or claim that the one condition is good for all fish (and there are some products that even claim they perform equally well in FW and SW!).