Running carbon in a wet/dry

[sh2000]

I have an 80 gal. RT I decided to run some carbon after a year of not running it. The tank is very clear but i have over 30 corals some leather.. and I wanna make sure the toxins don't harm any other corals. I put in 2 bags of Chemi-Pure into my sump after cleaning them or rinsing them with warm water until the black turned to clearish brown. I then dropped them into the sump. Did I do this right and how often do I need to remove the bags and replace them ? Any input would be helpful. It said on the box it came in or bottle it should last for several months. In the compartment where the bio balls are I have some foam or filter pads in it they don't have carbon there I'm planning on replacing the foam filter pads with black magic carbon filter pads.Is that necesaary since I'm running the Chemi-Pure in the sump ? Should I do both ?

 

[sh2000]

Thank You.

 

[sh2000]

any1

 

[wfd1008]

go checkout lion_crazz 101 tips. he mentions carbon in there. i run carbon in all of my tanks and they seem to do fine. just keep an eye on your pH cause it might drop after you add the carbon.

 

[candycane]

I have no experience with the chem brand myself. I have switched nearly all of my tanks over to carbon, but use stuff with a higher flow through rate. If the carbon you have is pretty tightly packed together, you MIGHT want to look into Seachem Matrix or Kent Reef Carbon.
As for the rest of it, I always say the same thing about bio-balls in a sump. You feed your tank I can only assume? When the filtration pulls the left over food down in to the sump, it flows over the bio-balls and gets stuck right? Now the bio-balls usually are NOT submerged, meaning that there really in general is no way for "animals" to get to the excess waste and remove it from the bio-balls. What do you think happens after awhile? It's kind of self explanatory. Same thing with most filter pads that are not submerged.
When and if you opt for carbon filter pads, you can cut a section off and measure the amount of phosphate that it will release. You may not have a problem with nitrates with that many corals, then again, I wouldn't be surprised if it was hanging around 20PPM most of the time. Are you feeding the corals several of times per week? Like cyclop-eeze or anything? When it comes to changing carbon, I myself do it about once a month. Carbon has the ability to form bacteria that breaks down the waste attached to it, just a good idea is to keep and eye on it and see how quickly it accumulates food or even a brown sludge over it.

 

[acrylic51]

Carbon isn't a bad thing to run on any system IMO......Carbon is better utilized and used to it's efficiency if run in an "active" mode, meaning water being forced through the carbon instead of running it in the "passive" mode meaning water just flowing over top of it......You'll get more life out of the carbon running it pressurized.

 

[dennis210]

I believe carbon is a good thing. I run two mag 350 cannisters with the carbon cartridge provided and change them out monthly. As acrylic stated - actively pumped carbon vrs just submerging a bag makes a very big difference.

 

[sh2000]

You all might have convinced me to take it out of the sump. I checked the PH 5 hours after i put it inand it was still even at 8.2.