I was surfing around and came across this stuff. It says it will " polish " the water. Is it a good product. I use Prime that is made by them with great success but I havent seen anything mentioned about purigen.

I ahve not used it nor do I know anyone who does, either. It says it binds the nitrates from the water..... I am not sure if it does anyother nitrogen product. I am assuming that it does not, for if it did, it could ruin a biological nitrogen cycle.

I also question whether it would be up to the job of the type of waste and consequent nitrates that goldfish can produce. IT may be that you end up having to regenerate it every few days. This is more problematic to me than just a water change.....

If you are hoping to use this product used to avoid water changes I guess I would worry because there are many other things in the water that need to be changed out other than just nitrates....

http://www.kokosgoldfish.invisionzone.com/...?showtopic=7981

http://www.kokosgoldfish.invisionzone.com/...showtopic=14157

AS far as a water polisher, given reasonable filtration (the Blue Rite Size floss cartridges do a good job) and reasonable turnover ( your 350s are certainly enough) you should not have any problem with less than crystal clear water using only the biological cycle, the floss cartridges and water changes.



I would be interested in knowing if anyone has tried this stuff.....

It seems I remember someone here using it or something like it and they said you just have to be really careful to change it out regularly or it will be letting all the stuff back into your tank. I'm gonna search for that old thread to see....

Ok I found the one I was thinking of. I was wrong...it wasn't the leeching of purigen (it says it doesn't leech back into the tank). The problem was when she bleached it to regenerate it.
http://www.kokosgoldfish.invisionzone.com/...topic=31793&hl=

and a few older posts about it too:
http://www.kokosgoldfish.invisionzone.com/...ighlite=purigen

It sounds like some people did like it....but there is a little to learn about it before using it. I have considered it before too, so I'm going to go back and read all those posts now too.

I think it works very well. It's simply artificial charcoal which you can regenerate instead of having to throw it out once it's saturated. And unlike charcoal, it doesn't leach the toxins it collects back into the water once it's saturated.

Brilliant in theory.

It's just a lot of trouble regenerating it using bleach. And that's an understatement! No matter how many times I tried to remove the bleach with Prime (went through two bottles) and soaking for hours and rinsing (about 100 times), it still smelled like a chlorine filled swimming pool.

I've switched back to activated charcoal. It's a lot easier just throwing the old stuff out and replacing it!

Also, I can change the charcoal immediately during a single filter clean so it's always there, rather than having to take a day or two (or a week!) to recharge the Purigen. Which means you have to open up the filter a second time to put it back in again. Unless you have two satchels, one recharging while the other is in the filter.

Thanks for clearing that up awrieger
Does it work better than charcoal or about the same? It does sound like it's too much trouble to reactivate it, is it too costly to just replace like we do charcoal?

I guess the results should be identical, because they work the same way. Just that one's natural and disposable while the other is artificial and rechargable. You can actually see the Purigen is working because it slowly goes dark brown as it becomes saturated. With charcoal, it's impossible to tell fresh from old!

In theory, Purigen should last forever with infinite recharging. It's a lot more expensive than an equivalent amount of charcoal, but the costs work out about even over a 12 month period.

So it's pretty much 6 of one and half a dozen of the other, performance and cost-wise over a year. For lazy people like me though, disposable charcoal is the way to go considering the hassle I went through of recharging the Purigen!


(PS. Disregard that thread of mine you linked to. The problem turned out to be an increase in chloramines in my tap water, not the Purigen leeching bleach as I first believed.)

Sounds good to me! Charcoal is what I'll stick with!

Im going to agree, Its not worth the hassle. Im not taking anything away from the product, Im just not going to add more to an already demanding maintenence routine.