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Everyone's thoughts on Chemipure and Chemipure Elite

MikeNapoli

MikeNapoli

I've used the Elite and I love this stuff. I haven't used it in my 120 yet but in my 55 one bag would clear my tank up and "polish" my water up so well. After a day of running it everyone in my house though I did something to the tank because "it looks so clean and clear".

Has anyone else used it or planning on using it?

Any reasons you like it or don't like it?
 
blange3

blange3

Well Mike, as you said I'm old school!

I just go with water changes and carbon. I've finally decided after 35 years of maintaining saltwater aquariums that it costs 3 times more to save on salt by using supplements and fancy filter media.

JMAO

Just My Ancient Opinion! ;)
 
C

Candi

I haven't tried the elite as I'm to cheap LOL but I've used regular chemipure in my 24g aquapod since day one. I heard about it originally from a fellow aquapod owern who's tank I adored and figured it it worked for him I'd give it a shot too. I also however do change 5g (with all the rock I have in there I'm sure that is far more then 20%) of the water each week, given that it's fairly well stocked and has no sump/skimmer etc I think doing both keeps it a healthy nice looking reef, always gotten great compliments on the tank.

Since I've been so happy with it in my small tank I use it in my new 70g as well... no complaints

I also run purigen in both, I keep carbon on hand but very rarely use it.
 
mynd

mynd

I am a firm believer that there is no reason to stick things in the tank unless they are necessary. The tanks flow ( in my tank ) keeps the tank crystal clear and there is no yellowing in my tank so right now there is no need for carbon there. Also, the chemipure elite has phophate remover in it.. Now this I like, but if you have phosphates then chances are you have silicates and why not use a 100ml bag of phosguard to do what you need it to do, rather then something like chemipure elite that is not specific to phosphates.

What I am saying is why use it in your tank if you don't have a problem. If you are using these items in your tank regularly then there has to be something wrong some place, cause if things were in order you would not need them. I used chemipure elite once in my tank cause I read of how useful it was. Since then I have not used it ever again as I just did not see any benefit.
 
C

Carlo

People use it as a form a maintenance and not because they specifically have a problem. Some people call it "polishing the water". Chemi-pure is nuclear grade carbon resin which is the best type of carbon available bar none. It's the same type of carbon used in re-breathers. To fully understand why it's such a good product one needs to understand the differences between positive and negatively charged ions.

Negative charged ions in the tank are good while positive charged ions are bad. Every go outside and smell the air after a lightning shower? You're smelling negative charged air molecules. This is the same as what ozone does.

Many people run a large amount of activated charcoal. If you change it out often it works well but if not it builds up positive ions which are bad.

Now that you understand the basic differences, Chemi-pure uses ionic exchange resins in combination with the nuclear grade carbon promote the negative ions in the tank. These ionic exchange resins also remove excess acids.

I've read that one a scale of 1 to 10 the carbon in Chemi-pure would rate a 10 while the typical activated carbon we buy at LFS rate a 2 or 3.

Chemi-pure is the only medium of it's kind that I know of. Chemi-pure Elite is the same thing but it includes ferric oxide (same thing in Phosban, RowaPhos, etc) which absorbs phosphates and silicates.

While not asked in the thread since I'm on a roll I'll talk about another product that many people swear by called Purigen by SeaChem. I'll grab some info from the web on it which seams to be very accurate IMHO. SeaChem Purigen is a premium synthetic adsorbent that is unlike any other filtration product. It is not a mixture of ion exchangers or adsorbents, but a unique macro-porous synthetic polymer that removes soluble and insoluble impurities from water at a rate and capacity that exceeds all others. Purigen; removes protiens, nitrites and nitrates, ammonia, and a broad spectrum of organics, yet its impact on trace elements is minimal. It significantly raises redox. It polishes water to unparalleled clarity. Purigen darkens progressively as it exhausts, and is easily renewed by treating with household bleach.

As I always like to think long term economical use of products, I've found the combination use of both to be the best of both worlds. In a reactor I have the water pass through the Purigen then through the Chemi-pure. The Purigen is easy to regenerate so I use it as a "first stage" which then allows the Chemi-pure to last a lot, lot longer then normal. While they are different types of products they do both remove many of the same things while still having different effects from each other. The combination use keeps costs down (due to regeneration) and keeps the REDOX of the tank pretty high.

I get people asking me a lot if they should use the Chemi-Pure or the Elite version. This is up to you. If you run a phosphate type absorber already then you don't need the Elite version. I myself like to run ferric oxide in it's own reactor so I can control the flow and run it lower (when I actually run it). With the combination of Chemi-Pure and Purigen in another reactor together I can run the flow higher. If space isn't an issue you can run a reactor full or partially filled with normal activated carbon as a pre-step to the chemi-pure/purigen reactor.

Carlo
 
C

Carlo

I'll add something to the above about the reactor. I use a Phosban 150 reactor to run this stuff in powered by a MiniJet 400 with a slight flow restriction but it probably isn't needed. I put the contents of (250ml) Purigen in a fine micron bag and stuff it down inside the reactor around the center tube. I then put 1 unit (bag) of Chemi-Pure on top of the Purigen again stuffing it in there. It's a tight fit getting both bags in there around the center tube but does work very well. It really forces the water to go through the bags. If you have what you think is to much "open" space at the top of the reactor feel free to add some normal activated carbon here if you want to fill the void space but it isn't needed.

I do skim aggressively (wet) on 3 skimmers and dry on one and run Ozone at a target of 390mv, run about 72 watts (soon to be 154 watts) of UV and this reactor of mixed media. The water is crystal clear and even looking through the tank (7') it looks like the fish swimming in air.

This stuff really polishes the water well and I'd especially recommend this combo to anyone not running ozone as it helps with the REDOX of the tank!

Carlo
 
C

Carlo

I've got a bunch of reactors all filled with diffent media. I typically don't run them all at the time time but run them when needed with the exception of the combo reactor mentioned above which I run a slow flow through to just polish the water.

I'm not sure if you can tell how clear the water is but this shot is taken through 7 foot of water (main reef tank) across the room and into the trigger tank. I didn't try and adjust the lighting of the picture or clean the glass on either tank but just wanted to grab a quick shot.

Carlo

582_24_08_07_1_33_37.JPG
 
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