The Puffer Forum

After browsing around on here for a while, I've seen a lot of discussion on using marine salt in making brackish water for brackish aquariums. Has anyone ever used a product called "Nutri*SeaWater"? It supposedly offers: no mixing required, instant saltwater changes, instant new marine aquarium setups, natural live marine bacteria, vitamins (?) and minerals, and maintains proper pH by improving buffering capacity.
Anyone have any experience with this product? Good/bad/indifferent?

Seems like a huge expense. About $26 for less than 5 gallons? You can get enough Instant Ocean to make 160 gallons of saltwater for $5 more. Marine salts all have vitamins and minerals, and help maintain pH, I believe. I can't see why it would be worth it to pay that much more for pre-mixed saltwater. Cheaper to get pre-mixed at the LFS if you don't want to mix it yourself.

It already sounds like bunk, since it claims to contain "natural live marine bacteria:. That bacteria doesn't live in the water column, it lives on surfaces, IE: live rock, sand.

That makes sense to me. One more question along these same lines; I was in a pet store yesterday getting an Aquaclear filter for this tank I'm setting up and I was browsing the different substrates they had to offer. One in particular caught my eye - a plastic bag filled with aragonite & water, advertising the same benefits at that live ocean seawater stuff (although I don't want to make any representation that the company is the same one). So this setup adds the substrate for the "live" bacteria & such to live on (along with the water), but I thought the other required element was oxygen (well, CO2, the whole respiration thing), which obviously you wouldn't get in a sealed plastic bag, even with a "12 month" shelf-life. So what's the deal with all this stuff; are any of the products legit?
(Good ol' freshwater aquariums - who ever heard of "live freshwater" products?!)