Seachem , Hypersorb and Purigen questions

[ozpkchris]

my water is clear and my nitrates hang around 20 ppm or so, im not really worried. but i do like to try new things and ive heard alot of good about this, so why not give it a try and maybe it will work great. maybe it will improve on my setup. thats why i check out this site every day to try and find something better than what already doing
and im really unhappy with the carbon i use its the premium carbon off drs and smith, no matter how much you rinse it its still gives off that black 'dust'
i think im gonna go off tcarswells word and spend a little more for some seachrum carbon,

 

[tcarswell]

Perhaps a refugium would be a better idea? Or even better, an algae filter. There are detailed plans, B&A readings, and other peoples results all in one thread here somewhere.

I am building a denitrifier for algae and nitrate reasons. I keep african cichlids and do not want to have to use an RO because my water is perfect for them except the nitrates ofcourse...

 

[tcarswell]

overdose you're prime at waterchanges. it detoxes the nitrates. petsolutions had RO units for around $150 i believe....

It does not really detoxify them. It makes them easier to be removed as I read it on the bottle. Amquel+ claims to detoxify them however. I like amquel but prime is my favorite. I just pulled out my purigen to have a look and it has truely made my water incredibly clear. My tank water I would almost seriously consider drinking at this point. It has the same parameters as the tap water.

EDIT correction. It does say it detoxifies nitrates! But then it says allowing the biofilter to more easily remove them. It takes a special kind of bacteria to remove Nitrates however. I am stumped.

 

[LowCel]

my water is clear and my nitrates hang around 20 ppm or so, im not really worried. but i do like to try new things and ive heard alot of good about this, so why not give it a try and maybe it will work great. maybe it will improve on my setup. thats why i check out this site every day to try and find something better than what already doing
and im really unhappy with the carbon i use its the premium carbon off drs and smith, no matter how much you rinse it its still gives off that black 'dust'
i think im gonna go off tcarswells word and spend a little more for some seachrum carbon,

I am using their matrix carbon and I rinsed two liters of it for less than five minutes and I had zero dust / black cloud go into my aquarium. I am very happy with it. It does cost a little more but most superior products do.

 

[tcarswell]

my water is clear and my nitrates hang around 20 ppm or so, im not really worried. but i do like to try new things and ive heard alot of good about this, so why not give it a try and maybe it will work great. maybe it will improve on my setup. thats why i check out this site every day to try and find something better than what already doing
and im really unhappy with the carbon i use its the premium carbon off drs and smith, no matter how much you rinse it its still gives off that black 'dust'
i think im gonna go off tcarswells word and spend a little more for some seachrum carbon,

Its definitely worth it. I used that stuff that comes in the milk carton looking box before and it sucks. My matrix carbon never gives off anything except when initially rinsing for maybe 3-5 minutes max. Also rena chemzorb or whatever is good stuff. I think it has other stuff than carbon but it works pretty well too. I would only use matrix or the rena stuff.

 

[ncutler]

Sorry to bring up an old thread but found it as I was searching info for hypersorb.

I've been using purigen for 2 years now and have found the exact same as others have stated. But according to seachem, it doesn't remove nitrates, it removes the organics that lead to nitrates. Hypersorb is less specific than purigen.

Another thing that I saw was the detoxifying of nitrates from amquel+. This will only bind with nitrates for 24 hours. If you do a water test 24 hours later, it will be back to the levels they were before. Which is actually quite a negative thing, because the ammonia/nitrites become unavailable to aerobic bacteria, thus the bacteria die, so when it suddenly becomes available, there's less bacteria to process it. The only time that I use Amquel+ (because I used to love the stuff when I was unaware) now is when I'm doing water changes to reduce the ammonia/nitrites/nitrates and cannot do enough to bring them back into check.

For removing nitrates I've also used Kent Nitrate Sponge and Seachem's de*Nitrate. They encourage the development of aerobic bacteria on the surface so that it will remove the oxygen and allow for anaerobic bacteria inside to process the Nitrogen from the Nitrates. This anaerobic bacteria is the only way that Nitrates can be removed biologically, and it requires a lack of oxygen for them to exist. The best way to remove Nitrate that I have found is by building a coil denitrator, which has even outperformed the Nitrate Sponge or de*Nitrate. Worth googling it if you're really trying to reduce Nitrates. I've found the key is to build multiple coils to allow more water to be de-oxygenated at the same time. Essentially you use coils of tubing placed around a PCP pipe, with it letting water in at the bottom of the PCP pipe. Water travels very slowly (drips per second) so as it travels through the coils, aerobic bacteria line the tubing, removing oxygen. By the time it enters the PCP pipe at the bottom, there's no oxygen and anaerobic bacteria colonize bio balls inside the PCP pipe traveling up and existing at the top back into the tank. Those drips of water will have 0 nitrates which 24/7 can really reduce Nitrates in the tank.

 

[taksan]

Anyone have experience with the hypersorb ? It must be relatively new because I never noticed it before and I am a bit of a SEACHEM whore...

Hypersorb is mainly for planted tanks it is less agrressive then Purigen.

A few points ....
Purigen, Hypersorb whatever do NOT REMOVE NITRATES !!!

They remove dissolved organic compounds BEFORE they go through the aerobic conversion process that ends up as Nitrates.

The Nitrate reduction function of Purigen is based on the removal of these compounds and not the direct removal of nitrate.

AP's Nitrazorb does directly remove nitrates.

I use a combination of three forms of chemical filtration as the final stage of my filtration

1) Carbon , Ion exchange resin (AP's Bio-chemzorb) then through to
2) Nitrate, Nitrite, Ammonia removal (AP's Nitrazorb) then finally to
3) Purigen for removal of dissolved organics

This three stage chemical treatment in combination with normal aerobic filtration and UV sterilization (and regular WC's of course) results in optimum "perfect" water conditions for my fish.

 

[bbortko]

I bought hypersorb based on a product description I had read which summarized it as doing the same thing as carbon with the benefit of being regenerated.