Does purigen starve your natural biological filter?

[coryuo1986]

So how I understand purigen is it absorbs organic waste and ammonia and such. So if it’s absorbing all of this wouldn’t it then be absorbing essentially what your natural biological filter needs to thrive?

 

[FahakaPapa]

Unless your natural bio filter is taking out every last bit of organics (no chance it is) then the purigen should just be helping lower the total amount of organics in the tank.

 

[Rocksor]

Purigen absorbs organic compounds that lead to the creation of ammonia. It will not absorb ammonia, nitrites, or nitrates. So purigen will reduce the amount of nitrifying bacteria in your filter because there is less ammonia being produced. Once you remove the purigen, the ammonia eating and nitrite eating bacteria will increase to accommodate the increase in ammonia and nitrite produced in the tank.

The only time for it to be bad to remove the purigen is if you do not have sufficient biological media to begin with to handle the increase and decrease of the ammonia/nitrite.

 

[fishdance]

There is a significant difference between absorb and adsorb.

This might help understand how it works and can be recharged.

 

[FahakaPapa]

Thought maybe I should ask this here… has anyone recharged Purigen? I don’t understand the part of soaking for 4 hours with a buffer (discus buffer on the instructions). Anyone know why??

 

[Rocksor]

Thought maybe I should ask this here… has anyone recharged Purigen? I don’t understand the part of soaking for 4 hours with a buffer (discus buffer on the instructions). Anyone know why??

Man I haven't used that in awhile. The old instructions prior to 2010 didn't have the buffer portion. But a search on the Seachem forum site produced this:

...the quote from this forum dates back to 2009. Since then, Purigen regeneration process has changed. The most updated regeneration process is on the Seachem website. The most common household bleach has gone up in concentration since 2009 ( 6%-> 8.25%). Because of this change in concentration of bleach, we want to ensure that lowly buffered or unbuffered water does not potentially reduce pH, thus the buffer addition to freshwater regeneration of Purigen....

The Neutral Regulator step is intended to protect low-pH or poorly-buffered tanks against the slight drop in pH that can result from the addition of newly regenerated Purigen. If your tank is well buffered, you can forgo this step to prevent any possible addition of phosphates in your aquarium.

Basically measure the KH of your tank after using Purigen.