Seachem Purigen Review: How to Use, Regenerate & more

Inarguably the most important thing in fishkeeping is making sure your fish are healthy and live a long life. The factor directly responsible for that is the water they swim around all day. This water needs to be clean and pure from debris and toxins that build up over time. Although there are quite a few ways to ensure that water keeps clean, mechanical filtration is the most popular and effective way.

Our team takes fishkeeping very seriously, and they researched a few products in the market to find the best out there. During this extensive research, we came across Seachem Purigen, a filtering media that has proved itself professional and advanced.

This article will go through Seachem Purigen review and discuss how it works and why it’s such a popular choice among aquarists. We’ll also compare it to other popular mechanical filter media options and show you how to use it in your aquarium setup.

Seachem Purigen Overview

Seachem Purigen is a synthetic resin mechanical filtration media that eliminates biological waste, dirt, nitrates, and ammonia through its macroporous qualities. Simplified, this product is a highly optimized media for your filter that specializes in removing organic waste.

Seachem comes in different sizes for your convenience, with the most popular being 100mg. It’s important to realize that this won’t entirely replace chemical filtration for you. This filter media is more of a high-capacity mechanical filtration than a chemical one.

They claim to remove impurities at 500% more than the competition and last 2 to 3 times longer. This is all due to its impressive qualities that we’ll be discussing below. But is it true?

Difference Between Activated Carbon and Seachem Purigen

The use of chemical filtration in aquariums remains controversial. Some people stand by it, and some are very much against the idea. Regardless of which of these two categories you’re part of, it is always useful to understand the key differences between the two filters in question, their advantages or disadvantages, and when best to use either.

The Seachem Purigen and Activated Carbon are chemical filters and have the same function but different benefits. Let’s take a look at Seachem Purigen vs carbon.

Activated Carbon

The durability of this filter depends on the organic load inside the aquarium you use it in, which means its life expectancy can range from 10 days to over a month in accordance.

This type of filter can not be restored once it has been saturated. A major concern here is that you’re unlikely to tell when the carbon becomes saturated due to its original dark black color. The more matte the carbon appears, the more porous it will be, which indicates the increased effectiveness of the filter.

Generally, users lean towards this product to remove any discoloration, odor, organic compounds, chlorine, chloramine, trace elements, and heavy metals from the water, but the filter isn’t capable of removing ammonia, nitrite, or nitrate.

Activated carbon also removes any medication or liquid fertilizers introduced to the water. To put it simply, this is not a selective filter. It gets rid of harmful components and healthy ones in an aquatic environment, which makes it hard to imagine an ideal situation in which this product can be used for a long time or habitually.

Seachem Purigen Bag

When comparing these two products, there is a really wide array of differences between them. For starters, the Seachem Purigen durability and life expectancy are much longer than activated carbon.

When the little pumice become saturated, which you can notice because of the change in color from white to brown, they can be renewed up to 10 times, which is another difference between the two products.

The structure of the Seachem Purigen bag is vividly different as well, as it is a macroporous polymer and is capable of removing soluble and insoluble impurities from the water.

A major differentiation of this product from activated carbon is its selectiveness. Both of them can remove color, odor, heavy metal, organic compounds, and more from the water. However, the seachem filter media does not remove trace elements, medicine, or fertilizers. In short, only simple organic compounds will be removed from the water by this filter media.

Benefits Of Using Seachem Purigen

Everybody loves a good product, with versatile features and easy usability. And when such a product comes at a great price point, it is all the more impressive. With that being said, let us introduce you to the best features you will encounter when using the Seachem Purigen mechanical filter.

1. One of the most satisfying things about an aquarium that you set up and maintain by yourself is getting to enjoy its beauty, and to do so, the water inside the aquarium needs to be clear as day. This aquarium filtration media will always ensure that your freshwater or saltwater aquarium remains colorless, odorless, and clear by removing microparticles that discolor the water.
2. An environment that contains living creatures needs to remain clear of impurities. By removing nitrogenous waste (things like fish waste, food, decayed plants, etc.), this chemical filter media ensures that the amounts of ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate will always be kept in check.
3. Filters need to have sufficient surface area to have a large filtering capacity. The Seachem Purigen 100ml achieves this because of its spherical shape and macroporous structure, allowing for more efficient waste removal and higher capacity than most other filter media.
4. A product used to maintain good health, whether humans or their pets use it, needs to be effective, reliable, and somewhat long-lasting. After using Seachem Purigen for a while, you will notice a darkening of its color. This will signal that the filter has been used for a very long time up until that point, but that doesn’t mean it’s time to throw it away. Contrarily, with an average renewal record of up to 10 times, it is possible to restore the longevity of this filter, and the method isn’t hard at all!

Seachem Purigen vs. Matrix

Since both products are made from Seachem. You can expect both to have amazing performance and results. But how exactly do they differ, and how do they resemble each other.

To keep it short and simple, The Seachem Matrix is best for nitrate filtration, organic compound, copper, heavy metal, and color impurities removal to keep it short and simple.

Similarly, Seachem Purigen is also very effective in directly removing organic compounds and discoloration of the water. In contrast, nitrogenous waste and ammonia aren’t directly removed by the filter pumice itself, even though Purigen indirectly lowers their levels.

Typically, the Seachem Matrix excels in aggressively targetting a wide range of impurities in different types of aquarium setups. In contrast, the Purigen is highly efficient in targeting waste and discoloration while also maintaining the absorption of organic molecules without removing other types of contaminants.

Features

The Seachem Purigen is full of features that make it a great value for money product. These features together can make or break a product and impact people’s decisions. Below you’ll find all the features worth mentioning listed and explained.

• Regeneration: The Purigen is reusable, meaning even after it gets worn out, you can recharge it with a mix of watered-down bleach. This element will burn all materials removed from the tank.
• No impact on medication: Sometimes, your aquatic pets need some extra maintenance to make sure they’re in their most perfect health. Sometimes, this medicine can interfere with the filter media in the aquarium. However, with Seachem Purigen, you won’t face such problems, as it doesn’t interfere with any medication incorporated into the aquarium.
• Capacity: The Purigen is shaped like a sphere and macroporous. This results in a more functional product when it comes to removing toxins and makes it a product with more capacity than others.
• Removes water discoloration and polishes it: If you’ve noticed your water getting discolored, you can be sure that the cause for that is substances such as tannis. This aquarium filtration media can easily handle this substance. This chemical filter media also helps to polish the water by removing microscopic particles.
• Removes odors: Have you ever thought that your tank smells, although you might’ve taken good care of it? You can be sure that the Purigen bags will treat it in no time, and make sure those unpleasant smells disappear.

How to Use Seachem Purigen

We have already discussed the many features and functions of the Seachem Purigen and why it is considered the best filter media. Still, it is time to tell you how easy you can to use this product.

Right when you open the product packaging, the first step is to rinse the bag. Seachem Purigen also offers an appropriate bag for this purpose, but any mesh bag of 180 or less micron is ideal.

Ideally, the Seachem Purigen needs to be positioned to enhance the water flow through the little pumice. Any high flow area of a trickle filter, like a box filter, media chamber, or canister filter, is good for this filtration media.

And that is really what there is to it, that simply, you can put your Seachem Purigen to use and observe how the health of your aquatic environment will improve day by day.

How to Recharge Purigen

We mentioned earlier that recharging Purigen is easy and can be done up to 10 times. Let’s go step by step into Seachem Purigen regeneration:

1. You will first take out the saturated mesh bag of Purigen (we said saturation would be easy to detect due to a color change) and put it in a clean container. You will need to rinse the bag of pumice to remove the easily cleanable debris.
2. Next up, you will need to mix water and bleach on a 1:1 ratio ( notably, the total amount isn’t really important because keeping the ratio at 1:1 is critical). The mesh bag will need to sit in this mixture for about 24 hours without being disturbed too much.
3. After the designated 24 hours have passed, you will rinse the mesh bag again to remove the bleach. Be careful here to avoid getting any bleach on your clothes or skin.
4. Proceed by filling a bowl with enough tank water to cover the Purigen bag. In this water bowl, you’re going to add about two capfuls of primer. The reason for this is to make sure that all the bleach is neutralized and the chemicals are detoxified. The Purigen will stay in this mixture for another 24 hours.
5. The amount of time the Purigen stays in the water-primer mixture is important because it ensures that all the chlorine has been thoroughly removed from the pumice. A way to test if there is any remaining chlorine in the Purigen is by smelling the mesh bag, and if you can detect any chlorine at all by the smell, it needs to go back into the primer.

That wraps up the regeneration process. After that last step and the chlorine test have been completed successfully, you can use the newly regenerated Seachem Purigen anytime you want.

It would be worth mentioning that, since this filter media can be regenerated up to 10 times, you might want to label some zip lock back with the number of times the respective Purigen mesh bag has been regenerated to keep track and not waste your efforts and product.

Conclusion

Finally, we can fully say that the Seachem Purigen is one of the best products of its kind in the market and can solve a wide array of problems in a short time. It’s advised that you use it responsibly and with the guidance given by us and the company FAQ if you have more questions.

We highly recommend Purigen, especially for people who need to remove certain elements from their tank without compromising the positive ones or using many different products. Seachem is also easy to use, so it’s great for beginners as well. We hope that this article, backed by years of experience and professionalism, served you well and helped you make the right and efficient choice for you and your pets.

FAQs

There’s a lot of information to consider when deciding to buy the Seachem Purigen. Use the answers to the following frequently asked questions to help understand the product better and to feel confident in your decision.