Bio Magic trial report

Boaters (and possibly caravanners) will happily read this, because it's about toilets - a favourite subject. The rest of you can look away now if you are squeamish as some of the following is a tad graphic.

We've been trialling Bio Magic, and alternative to the usual bue formaldehide toilet fluids like Aqua kem and Elsan fluid. Bo Magic is clear and odourless and claims to work by supplying the natural bacteria in your poo with lots of oxygen so they can break it down quickly and without odour. I'm not sure what the chemical formula is. The bottle just says the contents are water, oxygen and nitrogen. Anyway it claims to be perfectly safe, non staining etc etc and it very probably is.

We tried it in an effort to be environmentally responsible and to get rid of the chemical smell of the blue stuff. Previously we had tried Aqua Kem green which was frankly disgusting.

We've now used Bio Magic a number of times and here are our conclusions. I should add that we are using it in a cassette toilet.

Does Bio Magic work?

Yes it seems to. Everything is odourless and it really does breakdown the tank contents in a matter of a couple of hours. Even the loo paper. All you get when you empty the tank is liquid, so the tank cleans out easily. For the foreseeable future, we'll keep using it.

The downside? Well the resulting liquid is brown and not pretty blue but I can live with that as it all pours away so easily. You need to thoroughly clean out your holding tanks before using the product so that the bacteria aren't killed by formaldehide residue. Our impression was that Bio Magic worked better after a few cycles. The bacteria run out of oxygen after three days so if you don't empty the tank before then, you need to add another dose. Bio Magic is quite a lot more expensive than blue stuff if you buy it in small quantities. We will be buying it in the larger sizes from now on as they are much cheaper and it claims to have an indefinite shelf life. You can get the cost down to below 10p a day this way.

Has anyone else out there tried it? I'd like to know how you got on.

Finally I should say that we have no connection whatever with whoever makes or sells the stuff.