To Carbon or not to Carbon

[salt55]

I have a fluval 404 canister filter on my 55. I read on a container of carbon i bought that i shouldnt use carbon all the time. I just recently started keeping corals so it hasnt been a problem up until now. What do all of you think and do? thank you

 

[angelofdeath132]

i run my carbon 24/7 on my emporer 400, with no probs. but i also don't have any corals either, unsure if it would affect them or not.

 

[j21kickster]

i always run carbon- mainly because i dont use a skimmer (on the tank im talking about) They (manufacturer) say that b/c of the elements it removes it shouldnt br used 24/7-but i've seen several large reef systems where carbon is used all the time and ones that dosent ever use carbon- the both look about the same and have equaly good coral growth.

 

[viper12775]

i run carbon 24/7 on my reef i use 1/2 lb in a micron bag and change it once a month

 

[saltyrich]

I use to run carbon 24/7, but now I only run it about 3 days a month. The reason I changed is that I started using DT's phytoplankton. It's great stuff. I don't want the phyto getting hung up in the filter. I just started doing this less than 2 months ago, and long term differences one way or the other have not shown up yet, in terms of carbon use. The corals love the DT's though.

 

[bang guy]

From experiments I've seen carbon appears to lose it's absorption ability a couple days after placing it. So, it doesn't really matter if you run it 24/7 or only for a few days, the results appear to be identical.

 

[surfnturf]

I have seen articles about "carbon tube filtration", the idea is that the internal pore structure of the carbon allows a low oxygen environment where denitrifying bacteria can consume nitrates. If that is the case, it definitely wouldn't hurt to run it all the time, in fact not changing it very often would be best. Never tried it, just thought I'd mention it.