Purigen as a substrate

[Jadenlea]

Thats right, I said it!  Most expensive substrate ever.

 

But seriously, I had a little mishap today.    I have a solo current tank which comes with its own little bitty filter.  The filter comes with sponge and carbon media.  I thought I would change the carbon out for purigen and 

used nylon stocking.  I filled the toe of my stocking with purigen and stuffed it in the itty bitty filter.  That was 3 days ago.

 

Today when I turned on the tank... PURIGEN EXPLOSION.  It looks like someone shook my tank and made a snowglobe, it was raining purigen.  The pressure of the air going through that filter must have blown a hole in the stocking and the purigen was spraying out the filter spray bar. 

It was quite impressive really.   There is so much purigen  on the floor of the planted tank there is no way to get it out without tearing the whole thing apart.

 

 

So... I now have Purigen as a substrate. 

 

 

Any ideas on what would work better than a nylon stocking?

[OMG Aquatics]

So how are you going to recharge the purigen?

[Dendrobatez]

The purigen should be light enough that it can be siphoned out no? Ive had it happen before but not on a large scale and was able to use an airline tube to get it out, it was lighter than the sand substrate I was using. Use "the bag" from Seachem, it seems expensive but you can get 3 good bags out of it and I recently found out you can re-seal it if you have a vacuum sealer.

[Shrimple minded]

And the winner for craziest substrate goes to: Jadenlea!

Is this in one of your purple sand tanks?

[Jadenlea]

Yes Shrimpie!!!!!      it really cant be siphoned out of this tank.  it is all low plants.  and the Bag is to big    the space that this fits in is about an inch by an inch

[Soothing Shrimp]

Should be one healthy tank for awhile.

[Crazyfishlady]

yikes - someone else posted on a FB about having something like this happen  

 

What a pain

[Jadenlea]

Went to the LFS looking for something to put the purigen in today and instead decided to try      Seachem De - Nitrate.     It is bigger so it  wont be able to explode into my tank.  At least not through the spray bar .  It says it doesnt  have to be changed .   Anyone tried it?   I am a purigen junky but not willing to do the snow globe thing again in that tank. 

[Dendrobatez]

I think it just provides a place for anaerobic bacteria to grow so it takes a while to build those up, also you can't have a flow over like 40 or 50gph or the bacteria doesn't work efficiently

[Jadenlea]

I dont think it is more than that .. its a teeny tiny filter.  I almost wonder if its worth keeping it hooked up at all   

 

http://current-usa.com/aquariums/solo-desktop-aquarium/