Purigen problems in Nano

[JohnRichard]

Today, I looked over and noticed the tank water was not right. 

 

20 seconds later, after closer inspection, Invertebrates were dead, and other things in an unhealthy state. 

 

The only change was the addition of a Purigen pack two days ago.  This setup has been stable for since January of 2016, and has had purgien in its filtration previously.  I can only assume that the addition of the Purigen was either too much for the system to handle, or something else happened.  I'm saddened by the loss of my favorite banded legged crab.  

 

Has anyone else experienced Purigen issues in small systems?  I had added some before in the same system, but nothing ever happened except the package breaking open and spilling magic beads into the sand bed - that was a fun cleanup day and nothing died from that.  I'm going directly back to the way it was before I added the purigen, following a 50% water change, hoping it will stabilize. And I'm definitely not using purigen again. 

 

To head off some questions, I rinsed the pack in running water for about 30 minutes after a 24h soak in a bowl of tank water.  It was a brand new, sealed pack ordered from Amazon. 

 

Thoughts? 

[malady]

How much did you add? you might of stripped the water clean.

 

I find using Purigen is over kill If you do water changes and run carbon/phosphate remover.

[xiaoxiy]

You sure nothing else got introduced into the tank on accident?

[Veng]

Purigen, assuming proper amounts are used, causes nothing like that.  Even a purigen overdose will not kill invertebrates.  

[uwharrie]

fresh pack or a replenished pack?

 

[JohnRichard]

This was a brand new pack, not replenished.   

[StevieT]

Doubt it had anything to do with Purigen

[Mariaface]

If water was flowing through the purigen as it should've been, you would've noticed the changes within hours, not days. It's possible that some kind of chain reaction happened - purigen cleared the water too quickly, something in your rocks died as a result or a coral released chemicals that weren't picked up by your filtration, etc. But purigen itself will just adsorb organics.

[JohnRichard]

20 hours ago, Mariaface said:

If water was flowing through the purigen as it should've been, you would've noticed the changes within hours, not days. It's possible that some kind of chain reaction happened - purigen cleared the water too quickly, something in your rocks died as a result or a coral released chemicals that weren't picked up by your filtration, etc. But purigen itself will just adsorb organics.

 

This is probably the most likely cause.  It is a small water volume, and I assume the amount I chose was still too much for the volume.  Oh well, things seem to be back to normal now. 

Restocking time...