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Seachem's purigen and discus buffer

Adoketa

Member
5 Year Member
Messages
51
Location
Malaysia
Hi all, I was wondering if anyone here has used purigen and discus buffer by Seachem and if it works as it claims - to lower TDS and to soften the water. We're lucky here in Malaysia in that my water off the tap reads at 100 (i don't know what unit my meter uses) but i saw some postings by discus folk that heckels and santa isabel angels need a tds of 50 or lower before they get triggered to spawn.
 

Mike Wise

Moderator
Staff member
5 Year Member
Messages
11,201
Location
Denver, Colorado, U.S.A.
In my opinion chemical additives may lower hardness and pH, but always increase electrical conductivity. In softwater fish, increased conductivity is as detrimental to successful breeding as slightly high hardness values. If you truly want to lower the water hardness, mix distilled/RO/DI water with your tap water. Since you don't say which species you keep, I can't say if 100 (ppm is my guess) is too hard. For most apistos, it is adequate.
 

dw1305

Well-Known Member
5 Year Member
Messages
2,755
Location
Wiltshire UK
Hi all,
I agree with Mike, these sorts of products really annoy me. It isn't that they are all useless, although a lot of them are, but the companies that market them hide behind a series of half-truths to suggest all sorts of miraculous properties for them and obscure what they actually do.

The "Seachem Discus buffer" is a phosphate buffer, a mixture of di-sodium phosphate and mono-sodium phosphate, you can adjust the proportion of these to give buffers stable from pH5.8 - pH7.8. Details here <https://www.wikiformulation.org/protocols/sodium-phosphate-buffer/10001>. The buffering only works if you have an excess of the compounds, and they will definitely increase both sodium (Na+) levels and conductivity.

Seachem won't tell you what is in "Purigen", they say
Purigen is a unique macro-porous synthetic polymer that removes soluble and insoluble impurities from water at a rate and capacity that exceeds all others"
Which isn't very helpful. It must work as a mechanical filter, in the same way as a diatom (diatomaceous earth) filter, and may not have any anion/cation exchange capacity. My suspicion would be that it is an "Amberlite" type resin.

These work, but I don't think thy offer any advantages over plants for nitrogen removal, and I think that the removal of tannins and other DOC's is a disadvantage. They won't have any effect on water hardness.

Some ion exchange materials can lower both pH and conductivity, an example would be any clay mineral based material with a "low base saturation percentage" , examples would be the bonsai soil "Akadama", which planted tank enthusiasts use. If you put Akadama into alkaline water with lots of calcium ions (like tap water from limestone aquifers we get in the SE of the UK), Ca++ ions in solution will be exchanged for H+ ions from the Akadama, the base saturation percentage of the Akadama will rise (more calcium ions bound) and the conductivity of the water will fall (less calcium ions in solution, and replaced by hydrogen ions that don't conduct electricity). As pH is a measure of the negative log10 of the H+ ion activity, more H+ ions will also lead to a lower pH.

cheers Darrel
 

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