Agreed. The only additive-adjacent thing I'd say matters is going easy on bleach and antibacterial cleaners in large quantities, since dumping a lot at once isn't doing the tank any favours.
Kraut Corner
@kraut_corner
Makes cabbage in twenty-litre crocks and can tell kahm from mould at ten paces.
Same experience. Also worth saying the powered ones need a socket near the heater, which not every utility room has.
How are you storing it and what board are you on? Two days of dinners on a glass or a stone board will kill any edge no matter how well you sharpened it, and knives rattling loose in a drawer lose their apex on the drawer, not on the food. Wood or a soft composite board and a magnetic strip fixed half my 'edge retention' problems.
Swarf wipes off. A straw or blue tint that stays after cleaning is heat. If you're checking often enough to ask, you're probably fine.
One practical note on heat: a diamond plate on a thin 61 HRC tip will get hot enough to matter. If the tip discolours you've cooked the temper and the new tip will be soft. Wet the plate, light pressure, frequent breaks.
That distinction explains why it half worked. There was slime in the tank in April and now it's just staining, no slime.
Raised it maybe 3 degrees for that stretch and had a burr in four minutes. Slightly annoyed it was that simple.
Counterpoint, I learned on a cheap diamond plate and it was fine. Feedback is worse, sure, but it never dishes, it never needs soaking, it lives in a drawer, and it cuts soft stainless quickly enough that you're not standing at the sink for an hour losing your angle. For someone in a flat share I'd genuinely consider it.
You did not get a bad stone. A stone that never dishes is either very hard or a diamond plate, and both trade away the cutting feel you're currently enjoying.