Reactor Purigen

HI I've just setup a HOB reactor by Kent using Purigen by seachem as a Media to reduce my level of nitrate.

I do regular water changes ,but my nitrates are always high, so I'm trying this out.

Did anybody try this approach? Does it work well? Is there a bad result?

Please let me know.

Thanks.

 

Have you ever think about add live plants to aquarium. Plants naturally utilize nitrate as a nutrient and food, other way also reduce fish population or cut back on feeding.

 

Purigen won’t remove nitrates
It will however help to keep them at a consistent level.... so if you can get it low through water changes, it should help to keep it there.
Overall purigen is fine in an hob, doesn’t need a reactor.
However.... if you have the reactor already, you can set up the reactor with seachem denitrate and keep the purigen in your hob, decent longer term solution.

 

HI thanks for the replies.

For the plants I've tried and had little success.

I'll give the Purigen 2 weeks and see if it keeps the nitrate at a low level. If it does I'll keep it for a while , if not I'll use denigrate in the reactor and put the Purigen in the hob.

Thanks

 

Hello, I'd like to update the status of my NITRATE problem... its been a week since I've installed the reactor with Purigen. No water change this week, still not using Denitrate.

The nitrate level has lowered from a 80PPM to 40PPM... it seems to work...

Next week I'll do a water change and update the status.

 

It takes an incredible number of plants to effectively reduce nitrates in a heavily stocked aquarium - doubly true if the tank is a small 20 - 50 gallons. For many of us ... it's just not an option because we aren't interested in plants, or their care, or we don't have a "green thumb" - and fish such as goldfish tear them up anyway.

I have a 72 gallon tank with four large fancy goldfish that produce so much waste - I cannot go more than three weeks on each filter before cleaning them. Yet - I keep Nitrates down to 5ppm or less (often ZERO) by using POND MATRIX in an Eheim 2215 filter.

This canister has two course / fine sponges in the bottom and the rest of it is filled with POND MATRIX - I restrict the outflow of the canister to at, or under 50 gph and I have a flowmeter installed to get me rougly in that neighborhood. What that means is my flow is actually lower than 50 gph. The low O2 content provides an environment where the anaerobic bacteria necessary to convert nitrates to nitrogen can grow.

Obviously - if you only have one filter ... this is not a practical setup for many people because this kind of setup actually inhibits the growth of AEROBIC bacteria necessary to eliminate ammonia and nitrites - but I have two other filters on the tank that do that.

I'm currently in the process of adding BIOHOME media to my other filters. POND GURU seems to think it will reduce nitrates even without flow restriction - due to it's porosity. We'll see. I ordered two KG of it and I can tell you it's MUCH MORE consistent than Pond Matrix in the porosity department. It really sucks up water. You order POND MATRIX - some of it will float - some of it will sink. Some of it looks like white volcanic rock - some of it looks like smooth marble. So POND MATRIX isn't consistent, but with enough of it ... in the kind of setup I have - it will work.

But I'm hoping BIOHOME will be better.

EDIT: Nitrate reduction is HARD ... it took me two years of experimenting to come up with the system I have now that works finally. These bacteria grow SLOW ... and it takes at least six months imo to get it to work even if you know what you're doing. And I didn't know what I was doing in the beginning and, in reality - still don't. It's all trial and error.