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Carbon
Activated carbon is very effective at CHEMICALLY cleaning
aquarium water
 It
is great for removing waste products of corals and fish. By
itself, it can't usually remove all the waste nutrients in
your tank. But it is certainly great at polishing off your
water.
Even if you have actually done everything else to to reduce
the number of nutrients within your system, carbon can still
be effective and helpful in maintaining water control.
CARBON SOURCE
Activated carbon comes in many forms and pore sizes, and
there's different considerations to keep in mind, but you
should always choose a high-quality carbon. Don't go buy the
cheapest carbon, especially one that is not made specifically
for aquarium use. Some of these can actually release phosphates
back into your aquarium. I think I recall that carbon made
from coconuts has this problem. I need to check on this.
PORE SIZE
The size of the pores in the carbon will determine how efficiently
it removes waste from your water.
If it has the wrong pore size, it may not be effective whatsoever
and you may be totally wasting your money.
HOW TO USE IT
We like to use carbon "passively". This means that
we don't put it in a high flow area where lots of water would
pass through it quickly.
We put in the low current area. So that the amount of water
going through, it is very very slow. So that any changes it
causes in the water chemistry also happens very slowly. Corals
like stability. You can have a problem if you introduce carbon
into a tank that has not had it in a long time. Beware if
your water is yellowish and you havent used carbon for some
time. If you put a lot of carbon in a very rapidly moving
area, you can quickly remove the yellowing compounds but also
shock your stony corals. Because what's happening there is
a yellow in the water acts as a filter to the lights and your
corals have adapted to that particular light wavelength and
intensity. By adding the carbon, you remove the yellowing
compounds and suddenly the corals are being shocked by lots
of extra light. This isnt good.
HOW OFTEN
Because of this, you don't really want to add a large
amount of carbon at once. To a system that hasn't had it on
before, you will want to start out with us very small amounts.
For example for a 29 gallon system, startout with a few tablespoons
in a low flow at area and then gradually increase that over
time to a regular amount. Typically you should change the
bag of carbon every 30 days.
It's really hard to monitor how quickly carbon is used up.
Some studies indicate that with carbon left too long in the
sump, you can start giving off giving back some of the pollutants
that it has taken up so that's why this is important to remember.
You don't want to just leave it in there for months and months
and months at a time. You can actually be read polluting your
system if you do that.
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