Poly-fil by Fairfield - Not Safe for Aquariums

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
Was it the green bag pillow stuffing? Like the above say they won't recommend using it to protect themselves. I've been using it in my canister filter for a while now without any problems. I know many other people use it as well. It's pretty much the same thing as the more expensive stuff in at the pet store. There is a huge markup on aquarium stuff.
Te stuff I use is the 100% polyester not the flame retardant kind. The cheapest stuff is usually the right stuff.
 
I'm not putting this stuff in my filters if they don't recommend it. I'll pay a bit more for the aquarium safe stuff elsewhere.

Thanks for sharing, and if it makes you feel uncomfortable using this material…
Don’t.
After using this for quite awhile, in various systems, my only objection to it is it`s annoying habit of losing strands.
Went with the “quilt batting” form of this material and found it to be much easier to work with.
 
I know this is an old thread but it showed up on Google while searching and I wanted to share my experience.

I’ve had a well established tank running for a bit now and I have recently been struggling figuring out why I would randomly lose fish. They aren’t struggling for oxygen, they don’t have visible damage, they just drop dead randomly. Ammonia tests 0, nitrite 0, nitrate 15ish.

I’ve noticed that the losses seem to come slowly the days after filter maintenance. I have a canister and I run a sponge that came with it as my coarse filtration, then polyfil 100% fiber sheets cut to fit into the tray for fine mechanical filtration, then Seachem matrix for biological filtration. No carbon, no other stuff.

During cleanings I take everything out, rinse the crud out of the canister, rinse the sponge, put in new polyfil, then reassemble. I don’t touch the bio media.

Then the following days I get random fish losses. It took a bit for me to figure out that I THINK there is something in the polyfil contaminating my water and poisoning my fish. I also noticed a light white cloudy tint to my tank shortly after a canister cleaning even when I do no sort of gravel vac. Remeber, I’m not not touching my bio media, just removing the tray and putting it back in.

I did canister maintenance the other day and I lost at least 1 fish the next 3 days in a row (Dainty Cory, golden Oto, SAE) and had cloudy water. After that I was done, I spent the money and got some legit filter media from my LFS and did a 50% water changed followed by a 75% water change to make sure anything that could have been in my water was removed.

That was yesterday. Today, no fish losses.

Now, I’ve seen tons and tons and tons of people praise polyfil and call BS on posts like this but I don’t trust it. Even though it isn’t the flame retardant stuff and says 100% polyester and hypoallergenic, I think there is something in either the procur or the process to make it that isn’t safe for my aquatic friends.
 
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