Carbon

rgaines

rgaines

Member
Is it good to use carbon in a reef tank. Someone at a lfs told me that it would remove all that good chemicals in my water. ( trace elements, calcium, iodine, etc) :notsure:
 
attml

attml

Active Member
I saw a great article by Anthony Calfo recently where he talked about a lot of things but one of them was about people not using enough carbon. He made a great point about how we spend all of this money on high definition lighting then we cut the amount of light our corals receive way down because we have dingy, yellow water full of nutients blocking out light. It was a great article but I can't find it. In my system I have always run carbon 24/7 and I think it definitely helps my system.
 
attml

attml

Active Member
IMO it is better to filter out the negative chemicals in my system and replenish any needed chemicals through regular water changes (which should be done anyway) than to leave in the problamatic stuff that causes unwanted algae problems, high phosphates and reduced lighting to my corals. Of the chemicals that you mentioned I have never noticed a drop in calcium that was attributable to carbon use. If you are doing regular water changes your system will get plenty of Iodine in your salt mix as well as most of the other of the needed elements. Most people dose CA/Alk for coral growth but like I said carbon use has never affected either for me.
 
C

cowpoke

Guest
Hmmm
I seem to remember something about carbon?
Shouldn't it only react with organic compounds?
And some of the transition metals?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top