Stress coat in tank

Hi, I know that stress coat is immediate in its effect, however, was curious to know how long it stays active in the water. I have searched a while and only found a few references to 24 to 48 hours. Can anyone confirm this. Ordered some purigen and prime but want to make sure the stress coat is completely dissipated before using. The details around purigen and stress coat are very confusing. Seachem techs seem to suggest on their forums that it's safe to use regularly, just not during regeneration while their FAQ states any amine product will make it toxic and makes no mention of it only being during regeneration. Guess I would prefer to be safe than sorry. All feedback welcome. Thanks.

 

Welcome to FishLore!

If you are going to be using Prime, there is no reason to use Stress Coat, since Prime does everything Stess Coat does and more. I really can't say how long Stress Coat stays active though.

Personally I would not use a product like Purigen because it removes the ammonia and nitrites from the water. Since ammonia and nitrite is removed your tank never cycles, which I guess is fine so long as the Purigen is working, but if it stops working...

But I really do not know much about Purigen and I could be way off base.

Sorry, I know I wasn't much help, but hey I tried!

Good luck!

 

Using Purigen will not disrupt your cycle. I moved it in and out of my discus tank for years without causing any sort of minI cycle or anything like that. The only thing that would change would be the nitrates creeping up and the water clarity going down if the purigen was out.

However I agree the stress coat is no longer needed.

 

EricV, I'm doubting you or saying you are wrong, you obviously know a lot more about Purigen than I do, but I do want to defend why I wrote what I did. (I try to never give bad info, but hey I'm not perfect...there I said it, you happy now! )

I really know very little about Purigen and when I went to SeaChem's website to see what exactly it does I saw this:

"Purigen® controls ammonia, nitrites and nitrates by removing nitrogenous organic waste that would otherwise release these harmful compounds."

and that is what led me to my conclusion.

 

Agree on the fact that I don't need to use both prime and stress coat. Was going to switch to prime but was a bit concerned about stress coat lingering I guess. Will just switch to prime and let the cycling finish without purigen and by then I would imagine stress coat should be long gone. Thx

 

EricV, I'm doubting you or saying you are wrong, you obviously know a lot more about Purigen than I do, but I do want to defend why I wrote what I did. (I try to never give bad info, but hey I'm not perfect...there I said it, you happy now! )

I really know very little about Purigen and when I went to SeaChem's website to see what exactly it does I saw this:

"Purigen® controls ammonia, nitrites and nitrates by removing nitrogenous organic waste that would otherwise release these harmful compounds."

and that is what led me to my conclusion.

Fair enough.

In fact I even agree with that line of thinking, however in practice I haven't seen any negative effects from its use. Maybe it's all in how much you use. I haven't seen any data on how much of ammonia, nitrite, etc is removed per set amount of purigen.

Z seems to have the right idea though with adding it after the cycle which should minimize any potential disruption or slowing of the cycle while simultaneously making sure the stress coat is long gone.