Question for Boyd's Chemi-pure users

[Autumn Wind]

For those of you who use Chemi-pure... I bought two unit of this stuff from my LFS when I opened the containers and took the bags out I noticed there is a rusty colored resin that settled on the bottom of the bag that has a slightly oily feel to it. Is this normal or do you think I could have bought an old and/or bad bottle? I didn't see an expiration date on the bottle so I'm not sure if it's possible for it to go 'bad'.
I went ahead and used it and well long story short less then 48 hours later I had one dead discus. This fish, or any of the 8, that are in this tank have never shown any signs of illness. In fact when I found him dead he still looked like he was in perfect condition, bright color and eyes, except for the not breathing part. :angry:
The rest of the fish looked normal but where not as enthusiastic as usual so I removed the Chemi-pure, did a 50% w/c and noticed improvement. Everyone is acting normal since.
Is it possible that I got a bad/old batch and that caused the death? I would appreciate any input. I am pretty upset over the loss and at my wits end trying to figure out what I did wrong.:(
thanks,
vanessa

[Graham]

Hi The beads that you saw are an ion exchange resin and prefectly safe and normal part of the product. The product can't get old and it's an excellant product.

Did you check the pH before and after you put the Chemi-Pure in? What you did was change the water chemistry and this guy didn't like it. He was used to the old water. When you removed the carbon and did the 50% water chnage you put things back to somewhere close to what they were..so every one perked back up.

[Autumn Wind]

I did check the Ph before using the Chemi-pure, the normal 6.8-7.0. In my panic in discovering the dead fish I didn't check the Ph after.
I guess you are thinking a Ph crash? I guess I didn't consider this posibility. Everything I've read indicates it's an excellent product, I couldn't find a negitive remark about it.
I just went to look something up while writing this and I realized that I made a fatal mistake, I used 2 units for a 30 gallon tank when I should have only used 1 unit. I'm not sure if I mis-read the instructions or what rendered me temporarly stupid but I can see what happened now. I am probably lucky I didn't kill them all.
Chalk that one up to lesson learned. :(
thanks Graham for helping me think this one through.
vanessa

[Graham]

Hi Vanessa, I wasn't thinking pH crash but just an overall change in water parameters. Using two units generally wouldn't be a problem but in this case some parameter was moved too much.