purigen stuff.

purigen stuff is fouled by polyvinyl pyrrolidon

I was at my new local petsmart who was having a grand opening sale ($5 off $10) I was going to get a family of guppies but apparently thier sale was a success and there were like 3 fish in the wall of tanks (although, I wonder how they cycle the tanks in a new store. probably not. which would also expain the murky water)... but this isnt a petsmart flame thing so Ill leave this for another day.

I instead found a purigen pillow. I've been reading about it, as well as had it suggested to me in another thread. It was good for up to 100 gallons (mine is 20) Its installed, practically, still got some issues but ill figure them out. My question is which declorinators's are safe to use with it? A little digging showed that amine based slime coat products caused the pillow to become non-rechargable. what exactly constitutes an amine based slime coat

I use tetra aquasafe which is supposed to get its slimyness from aloe. here are the ingredients.

ingredients: sodium hydroxymethane sulfinate, polyvinyl pyrollidones, organic hydrocolloids, organic chellating compounds

I could have picked up a bottle of Prime(reccomended on card), but I just bought a bottle of aquasafe and I didn't need to change the water yet.

it said or equivalent after the prime.

Rinse well, then soak for 8 hours with a solution containing 2 tablespoons of ChlorGuard™, Prime™, or equivalent dechlorinator per cup of water.

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before this gets dirty, here is a nice site crossreferencing alot of the dechlorinators

http://www.thetropicaltank.co.uk/rev-cond.htm

Plus I got issues with companies artificially forcing me to use thier product over competitors through withholding information or through blantent misinformation(FUD campaigns?). Aquarium products seem to be very bad at this. In fact this is the only branch of products in the US I can think of not forced to disclose the ingredients of the chemicals. 90% of the products' labels boil down to "magic juice, insert into tank and your fish will sing opera".. heck other pet supplies are required to disclose active ingredients. The entire industy appears to be fueled by ignorance. I prefer to deal in facts, not advertising magic.

Sorry for the antagonistic rant... Don't want to start a flame war about brands or anything, just seemed to be the quickest way to get my point across

Incase you are still reading and not already replying to my rant...

That being said, I am considering prime because at least seachem warned of the amine problem with slime coat products... only to revert back to an enigmatic warning about which ones will break it (SOME slime coat products). The faq gives a good explanation of what happens to the resin and mentions the amine based slime coat products. Also prime is very concentrated and is highly rated. so thats +3 and -1 for seachem. Right this moment seachem is on the top of my list of "non-evil" aquarium companies.

Also, the purigen appears to be working. Water is very clear and the nitrates are finally falling. When I first tested I was reading ~500PPM+ (? kool-aid red on AP test) Today 48 hours later, the resin is a cream/yellowish vs the stark white when new and the test color appears to be slightly less than cherry red (comparing directly with the test 2 days ago, i don't dump the test when doing comparisons. the color usually sticks pretty good in most tests)) I will retest and post results in about a week, assuming this thread and/or account isn't locked by moderators for my outburst.

Only problem is closest place that sells the seachem products is a 2.5 hr drive away. I got the purigen pillow on vacation. Shipping will push the already semi-expensive products into the outragously expensive area.

Also, Just for heck of it. I think I will request a full water quality statement including processing done to it (should still be public record, dont see how a terrorist could use that for anything) and post it on here somewhere for the curious. Theres something wrong with it. It tests as distilled/RO water (ph7 0am, 0 ni, 0 na, 0 gh, 0 kh, and im not even sure it has chlorine in it ha)

well enough talking about this tonight. I really dont want to be banned from here.

RTR said:

Seachem is the only aquarium products company I know of which practices full disclosure of their products. But to expect them to have analysed all competitive products and to provide that very expensive info is beyound the bounds of reason IMHO.

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sorry, i was unclear aobut that. I didn't expect them to. again seachem is on top of my list of cool companies. It's just very hard for me to do business with them.

that sentence needed to be clarified but i had already revised the post quite a few times and it was getting longer with each revision . 4 letter words are soooo concise and simplistic. replacing them with socially acceptable language is confusing at times.

well, I will not be buying tetra products anymore .. anybody need any half empty food and chemicals. Pretty much a FUQ response. pretty much if your tank is over 6 months old they support NOTHING.

here is my email to tetra

Hello Brent,

Name of registrant: maaltan natlaam
Date and time of inquiry: Sunday, July 03, 2005, 2:57:34 PM

Question: Is your aquasafe water conditioner compatible with purigen resin?

I am trying to determine if your product is amine based.

http://www.seachem.com/support/FAQs/Purigen_faq.html

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Here is the response.

Thank you for contacting Tetra Care. The purpose of the Tetra Care e-mail rapid response is to respond to questions concerning the set up of aquariums and troubleshooting during the first six months. We can not offer comments on your question.

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No sense in that response. this was obviously one of those "tell me and i buy your product" situations. apparently they don't even tell the "techs" whats in there magic juice. If they would have told me a number or an email to call it would be better. hell for all i know now is they include pathogens in the aquasafe to sell the meds. probably not but how would i know