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Innovative Marine Aquariums

Purigen Issues


sangheili

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Cross posted from my tank thread...

 

For those of you using Purigen:

 

Yesterday I put a regen-ed bag of Purigen back in the tank (bleach for a day + prime for 2 days) and this morning I woke up to some interesting things. First off the ORP dropped off a cliff shortly after placing the bag in the media basket. It went from 240 to 170. This is the lowest i've ever seen ORP on this tank.

 

Secondly the pH dropped the lowest I've seen in weeks. And the odd thing is now there is some stringy mucus in the tank in some spots. Very similar to the slime that my Wrasse puts off when sleeping but its not in the areas where he sleeps.

 

Hopefully this slime is harmless and the orp/ph changes didn't hurt anything. Some quick research says this isn't the first time people have reported these things after Purigen regen.

 

A picture of my ORP and pH graphs:

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This to me sounds like an explosion of the bacteria population similar to what you see when vodka dosing. I don't have an explanation as to why this would happen from what you described though.

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Interesting point about the bacterial bloom.

 

I did dose some Zeobak, Phyto, and KZ Coral Snow last night around the same time. But I have done these things before in larger quantities and seen no big impact.

 

Next time I regen the Purigen i'm going to soak it in tank water for a couple days switching out the water every now and then.

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I don't really recommend recharging purigen. It crashed my bio filter and caused a nasty ammonia spike that killed by BTA and turned my watermelon zoas yellow (they have regained most of their original color now) and their are some known issues with the recharging process leaching chlorine into the tank sometimes.

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I don't really recommend recharging purigen. It crashed my bio filter and caused a nasty ammonia spike that killed by BTA and turned my watermelon zoas yellow (they have regained most of their original color now) and their are some known issues with the recharging process leaching chlorine into the tank sometimes.

 

Ouch. I think I'll avoid it from now on :)

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Yeh as much as I love purigen I have never recharged a bag, with as much money in livestock as I have in my system now an extra 11$ every 6-8 weeks in my case isn't too terrible by comparison. Never had a bag experience with a fresh bag.

As for the potential bacteria bloom, happens pretty easily with a vodka overdose. The zeobac imo could cause that same effect over time. I dose half the amount of microbe lift as suggested in my tank and still get a very similar water clarity effect to what vodka gives which suggests to me a carbon source is in many of these products.

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You may already know about this, but did you use plain old regular bleach for the recharge? Most of the stores only sell the new "no-spill" bleach which actually has detergent in it. Seachem's updated instructions say not to use the no-spill bleach now.

 

Seems you can't get the detergent out no matter how much you rinse :angry:

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I have another point of view, even though a 100ml bag of purigen is quite inexpensive i recharge mine each about 5 times.

 

As others have pointed out, choosing the right bleach is important. A really good rinse under tap water after bleaching is important too. My last step is after rinsing i place the bag in a glass jar of rodi with 2 capfulls of prime, leave for 24 hours, rinse again and repeat. I then place in my sealed container all of my bags of purigen again with rodi & two capfulls of prime. Mine will sit recharged for up to two months before using. I rinse in dirty tank water as i change mine durring a wc.

 

i have done this for a several years on my fw system & just over a year on my three sw systems and never had an issue. I really like using purigen for all of my systems and i have had nothing but success in doing it this way, just my 2 cents

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