Using mainly SeaChem Purigen a bad idea?

You would need to constantly monitor water quality to be sure the media wasn't exausted..... wouldn't be my first choice by any means.

Dennis

Eventually, yes. I think even Seachem says so. The more you regenerate, the more quickly you'll need to regenerate again. In my mind, it's basically the (vastly) superior version of charcoal. As long as it's in a media bag, you'll be fine. You don't even need to use The Bag, because that thing is designed to withstand any of the regeneration processes for any of Seachem's media, some of which utilize muriatic acid instead of bleach, for example. Bleach is much less caustic, and I've got some Purigen in a media bag I got from PetSmart for like a dollar that's already been through a regeneration, and will probably go through another in the not too distant future.

However, your initial question seemed to be about exclusively using Purigen. Why would you do something like that? It's chemical filtration. Why would you remove your mechanical and biological filtration? I know the words sound like I'm berating you, but that's not my intention. I'm confused as to why you would think to remove the other filtration types, since typically, chemical filtration is the optional one of the bunch.

Just as I don't rely on only 1 filter for any of my tanks, I also wouldn't rely on just one filter media. At least throw some sponges in there with it. I don't think it is intended as a stand alone media.

I've run just purigen and sponges with out any problems. Eventually regen'ing will stop being effective but not until after quite a few regen's I'm still running purigen thats 2 years old and has about 10 regen's.

What other media are you running? Like Steph said I'd keep running some kind of sponge/pad/polyfil, but that and purigen is generally all you need.