It appears that it will provide the required degree of safety and I don't see how it can hurt. The price is reasonable. More water changes of course still would not hurt, probably will make the filter work longer.

(for ref: I've been asking on LOL, here, there is some info on the thread.)

OK, I've ordered a couple of packages just to try them. We'll see what happens.

Any reasons why not to use Seachem's Purigen?

It appears that it will keep the nitrates very low even with weekly water changes. I asked on LOL, and a couple of people who use it swear by it, one says that his nitrates are locked at 10. There ought to be something I'm missing here, but this does seem like a good solution.

So much for this idea.... gH of 3 is excellent.... Thanks.

(As for the dropping pH -- this is my curse here too. Loaches eat too much, buffering disappears too quickly, pH goes below 6.0, and to make it worse, if I forget to add the buffer, ammonia cleansing simply stops.)

PS. One thought that occurred to me. Nitrate reaction may not be absolute, it may be different depending on the water hardness (TDS). Asaik, generally the UK has pretty hard water, here it is pretty soft. I could not find gH for your town on the net, what is it?

Thanks a lot, medaka, this makes it much clearer.



Hara maesotensis's seem to be ok. The water change regime has been 25% weekly, but it is an overplanted tank, so some nitrates go into plant growth and so far I was able to get away with a couple of missed water changes, like this week.

(Local policy: all water changes stop and I don't even open tanks if another tank in the room has a dangerous infection. Happens to be the case this week, some nasty things came with the newest fish....hope they can wait few more days.)

No breeding activities noticed, but it would not succeed since they are currently dithered by Rosy Loaches (these are small 1" species that looks a lot like Cherry Barbs, but is hungry all the time) and have a couple of Vannies in the tank too. No growth noticed either, they are probably maxed out

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As for Pseudolaguvia, I don't have them; the seller is still quarantining them and treating with antibiotics (prevention -- most Indian Catfish arrives here seriously sick). Cannot see them for two weeks, and right now i don't feel brave enough to commit to this amount of water changes (there are 8 tanks here).

If you are sure this is simply the nitrAte matter, maybe there is a reasonable way to remove them in some other way (membranes?)... I'm going to ask around about this.

If I learn anything, or get Pseudolaguvia, I'll post back.

Thanks for the article link.