Carbon in the tank

daj0424

daj0424

Member
Well, this was definately one of my bigger mistakes that I made in the hobby. https://www.saltwaterfish.com/vb/newt...ewthread&f=15# I purchased some Chemi-cure carbon which comes in a bag that you just drop into your filter. I have the emperor 400 and it comes with media filter containers so I thought that it would be a good idea to take out the chemi-cure from the bag and put it in the media containers. I did this and turned the filter on to find that small pieces of chemi-cure was all over my aquarium sand bed. The media containers did not hold all the chemi-cure and now my sand bed has black carbon everywhere.
Is there aything that I can do to fix this problem. Will the carbon ever go away on its own? Can this be a potential problem down the road?
If anyone has any ideas I would really appreciate it. Thanks!
 
oceanists

oceanists

Active Member
oooooooooooooooooooooo that is horrible , i would syphon it out , i have serious doubts that it will disolve seeing that is a coal substance , if you do not want to use the bag it comes in , you can put it in a nylon stocking , which works really well, but i would definatly syphon it off of your sand bed so your snails and crabs dont come across it
 
daj0424

daj0424

Member
I was looking at the sand bed today and I noticed that there is not as much carbon in there as I thought. You can see small specs of black and it does not look like carbon but it was from the Chemi-pure. I tried to syphon it out and I cannot get it without getting the sand with it.
Do I need to take as much as I can out with my hands or do you think it will be okay to just stay there?
Now I am worried!
 
oceanists

oceanists

Active Member
well technically it is a chemical so i would try to take it out as much as possible before it starts to bury in the sand , ............ to be honest im not sure if it could hurt anything , so i dont want you to worry you with just my judgment but if it were me i would syphon it and just cut my losses with the sand that went with it
 
tormented

tormented

Member
I had an accident with carbon getting lose in my tank awhile ago. I just used a net to clean it up. If you swipe the net just above the sand it will make the carbon fly up and you can net it.
 
daj0424

daj0424

Member
I tried to net it out the other day and that did not go smoothly. This carbon is smaller than my sand particles. If it all added up it would be less than a baby's handful. Is this something to worry about or can I just let it go.
If I vaccum it out I will have to get rid of most if not all of my sand.
Any suggestions??????
 
oceanists

oceanists

Active Member
daj you still have carbon on your bed ?? , Im guessing it wont effect anything now that its been there awhile , well ......... other than the appearence .... i honestly dont think that it is going to go away because it is coal based and coal doesnt dissolve
 
daj0424

daj0424

Member
Yes, I still have it in my bed. I treid to get it out and there is now way that I am going to accomplish this without taking out my entire sand bed that I just put in over the holidays. I am just going to have to leave it and see what happens. I just hope with such a small amount that it is not going to have any effect in my tank. I wish I would have left the carbon in the bag.
 
krazyk

krazyk

Member
I think you'll be fine, same thing happened to me 2 months ago... I stick with the 2 pack of drop in's now ....
 
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