carbon

[sam]

hi, my question is does carbon ever go bad , reason being i put a bag of carbon in my sump two days ago and in the last two nights i have lost 2 chomis the first night then today i wake up to my yellow tang and flame angel have died . the tang i've had since 1997 i cannot figure out what has caused this i just did a water change last week and i check all paramiters in the tank everything is normal and the only thing i can think of is that it was the carbon i don't use it very often. another thing is that my
sump is not very old could it be the primer and glue for putting pvc together? thanks in advance

[mandarinfish]

Hi sam;
Unlike many reefkeepers in my area i too use carbon and never have any fish died of it, but my problem is that when i don't change it every 2,5 months, my water runs white and my corals close up.
I never heard that carbon can go sour, if you use the special prodused carbon for your reef.
i hope you'll find the answer soon.
(sorry for my bad english, i hope you can read it)

[Spanky]

Sam, there are some carbons that "could" create a Ph swing. Exactly which brand did you use?

Mandarin, you're doing just fine. clear as a bell.

Jerel

[traip93]

if I'm not mistaken, I believe carbon can absorb a lot of oxygen from the water if placed in a tank dry....did you wet the carbon first before placing it in the tank? If so, then forget this post.......it could just be timing and not have anything to do with the carbon at all......

[sam]

the carbon i used was an old bag i had all it says on it it is filter carbon . would it cause ph to go up or down . when i check ph this morning it was a little low but i think just do to lights off through the night.

[Spanky]

Sam

How long has that old bag been laying around? Did you know that carbon can adsorb things out of the air too.
There's a possibility that it managed to get contaminated somehow and then leak it back into the tank.
Also, it could just be a type of carbon that you wouldn't want to use in salt water.

[PaintGuru]

Out of curiosity, what types of carbon do you NOT want to use in SW? I just picked up a bulk/generic bag at the LFS just to see if it would help my little algae problem. Hopefully I did not make a mistake .

[Buzz_Hog]

From my experience, carbon becomes saturated and can no longer absorb like it should...

Some people have worried about it leeching the toxins back into the water, but it's been shown that it takes an extremely high temp. (1200 degrees or so) to get the carbon to leech...

I don't think that carbon necessarily becomes harmful, but it does reach a point in which it is no longer helpful...

Once the carbon is saturated, it will cause changes in the tank as whatever it was absorbing will start accumulating in the tank... With this in mind, I don't use carbon and keep my systems from having any types of fluctuations like that...

Then again, I could be totally wrong...

[NewReefer]

WOW sorry about your losses. Sounds like you went through the normal checks and thouoght it out a while to think about the carbon you started using. When I use carbon I do rinse it well first. Now you say it was in there a short time but you use an old carbon bag? It is of good habit to rinse everything that goes into your tank, even your hands. Maybe mold or something was growing on the bag, if you reuse the same one over?

Sorry your experiencing such a great loss, it always hurts to loose a pal!

[icebear]

ya, if it was old and 'lying around' it may have absorbed something along the way and when it was placed in the tank it released it into the water.... thats my guess...


sorry for your losses

[thefatman]

when yo usay "old" do you mean you used it once before.. then had it stored for a while, then used it again. if so, that could be the rpoblem. though i'm no marine biologist either.. but the carbon would have absorbed stuf from the tank the last time, and hten absorbed in the air during storage. then could have deposited something in the water..

coming from fresh water, i'm a freak about carbon. so i use it all the time. granted this new system has only been up jsut over two months, but it has had carbon the whole way and has already been changed twice. carbon will stop collecting after it already has reached it's colelcting point. then it just does no good, but i dont believe it does any harm.

i am very sorry for your loss, and hopefully at least one of us has nailed the question. i would advise pulling that carbon out and buying new if you insist on runnign with carbon.

i posted a few tank updates a week or two ago, and someone made the statement "nice clean clear water you have there" that, to me, is reason enough to keep runnign the carbon

[thefatman]

mandarin, i would say that your english is better than our belgian

heck, come to think of it, your english is better than my english!

[sam]

hi everyone, it was a while ago i posted this message about useing old carbon but i have to tell you what ever was in that carbon i used for two days not only did two of my fish die but i also don't have any aiptasia. when i wrote in about the dead fish i failed to mention about all the aiptasia that i have been baddling for a couple of years with no success. after two days that carbon was in the sump i noticed all the aiptasia were bailing off my live rock and were scattered on the sand bed . like i said i don't know what was in that carbon but to this day i do not have a single aiptasia in my tank. still have a half bag left, it might be gold to someone anyway right after my original post i did a water change as a just in case but corals and evrthing else were and have been fine .

jay the bag i used i had found in the basement, it was at least a year old and opened already . i had run out of the jar stuff i was useing. by the way your post are great

[NewReefer]

Glad to see a somewhat happy ending and lesson learned.

[PaintGuru]

Carbon....the aptasia killer!!!