Carbon

[williamc]

I saw some carbon at my walmart and I was wondering is this stuff good and what does it do?
Can you just cut one of your previous cartigages and put carbon in instead of replacing the whole thing

 

[shelaghfishface]

carbon is great for :
removing meds after treatment,
taking colour ,ie. tannins from the water

it is availible as pads and as loose carbon, how you can use it pretty much depends on what type of filter you have
it is usually used alongside,rather than in place of the current meda.

 

[minxfishy]

As Shelagh says, only really has the two uses, so unless you specifically need to remove medication after treating or you want to try and reduce the tannins leeched from bogwood, then I wouldnt bother, save your money.

 

[williamc]

thanks you guys for the help

 

[OldMan47]

If you want to use loose carbon, for one of its purposes, they make media bags that you can put it in. They are basically a thin, fine woven bag with a drawstring to keep the carbon from getting into everything.

 

[WILDER]

Like a member has already said it only good for removing meds.
Complete waste of money to use it all the time, it only affective for 2 to 9 days.

 

[LauraFrog]

I haven't found it effective at removing tannins personally. My tanks all contain natural wood and usually carbon, and they all look like weak tea. I use carbon or charcoal (longer lasting) in all my tanks because my water supply comes from an irrigation dam and I have had problems in the past with fertiliser runoff contaminating my tanks... the carbon seems to get rid of it if there is ever a problem so the worst I get it is the odd die off of snails which seem more susceptible. When that happens I load spare power filters with carbon and filter all the water in buckets before it goes into the tanks. Carbon also does get rid of meds, defo, use a large water change and then load the filter with carbon, change after 2 days, then remove the second lot after a week or so... no more medication in your water.