Which One Is The Activated Carbon Filter?

[Pyzik]

My fish have ich.

The treatment calls to remove the activated carbon from the filter for 4 days during treatment.

This is the black one in the filter right?

Sorry, I am sure this is a retarded question, but I did search first and don't seem to see anything stating this.

 

[lyotim88]

yes it is the black powder in the bag

 

[Pyzik]

yes it is the black powder in the bag

Hmm, okay. I have one that has a little alge on it (I think this is the bag). And one that is more like a scrub pad (this one is black, kind of fiberish).

 

[fatheadminnow]

The carbon is going to be in a pouch. The carbon is almost like sand, so if there is a bag/pouch in your filter with "sand" in it that is black, that is the carbon.

The scrub pad is your foam/sponge insert, and this is where a huge majority of your beneficial bacteria are going to colonize. You need to keep that in your filter at all times, unless you are cleaning it.

-FHM

 

[Pyzik]

The carbon is going to be in a pouch. The carbon is almost like sand, so if there is a bag/pouch in your filter with "sand" in it that is black, that is the carbon.

The scrub pad is your foam/sponge insert, and this is where a huge majority of your beneficial bacteria are going to colonize. You need to keep that in your filter at all times, unless you are cleaning it.

-FHM

Thank you so much.

I thought that the Carbon one is the one that is going to have all the good stuff on it.

 

[Craster]

The carbon is going to be in a pouch. The carbon is almost like sand, so if there is a bag/pouch in your filter with "sand" in it that is black, that is the carbon.

While that's true for an external, in an internal you're more likely to have carbon pads than loose carbon - black pads in the filter.

 

[waterdrop]

I've always wondered, can you feel small rough carbon grannules glued to those black mesh pads that are in some of the internals? I've never had those types myself. Its always been a mystery why anyone would use these since carbon is basically useless after 3 days and replacing custom pads that frequently would seem expensive and bothersome.

On another note, while its true that you want to think of the "dedicated" biomedia (like sponges, ceramic rings, ceramic gravels, plastic bioballs, even plain gravel and polyfloss to some extent) as being your chosen place to preserve your precious bacteria, it is not true that bacteria are overly choosy about where they colonize. Its predictable that they will grow by far the best inside a properly operating filter, because they will be getting a steady supply of food (ammonia and nitrite(NO2)) and oxygen (fresh oxygenated water) and its true that there is a "pecking order" among good biomedia materials (ceramics and sponges competing for top ranking, perhaps with nylon scouring material and plastic bioballs also in the competition.) But the chemolithoautotrophic species we want will try to build their biofilms on anything and everything, including carbon and all the surfaces out in the tank. Sometimes dark staining on decorations that we might think is brown algae, is actually also some bacteria biofilm. Carbon is considered a poor biomedia because the carbon itself tends to mechanically break down and be carried out with water changes eventually rather than last and last for years like ceramics and sponges.

~~waterdrop~~