interesting info on carbon : )

[Sea monkey]

stumbled across this article a while back and went back to look at it today . It had some really interesting results : )

http://web.archive.org/web/20000918...s/1/default.asp

http://web.archive.org/web/200104212...s/1/photo1.asp

[Sea monkey]

pretty funny that kent scored last and might very well be the most commonly used. sadly i got a huge bucket of it myself.

[tico mike]

Time to order up the Marineland. Cheap too.

[Sea monkey]

here is his second article on carbon.

http://www.pets-warehouse.com/carbon_1.htm

[Sea monkey]

anyone ever used lignite carbon before ?

or more specifically the calgon brand ? where would you even find it ? seems it gives you the most bang for the buck.

[freshfish]

You know whats funny my wifes boss just ordered me 27# bag of marineland and I was going to have her send it back because it wasn't the pellets. Well I'm going to keep it now. funny

[Sea monkey]

funny how something like pelletizing it can give the perception of quality when in fact it seems to hurt the product . I know I have found myself not liking a few brands just because they were crushed rather than pellets , i feel stupid now : )

WTS 5 gallon bucket of kent Reef Carbon ....

[freshfish]

Thats funny ryan. Hey the two maxi mods work awesome.

[sleeri]

The 2nd article comes to the following conclusion...

Slow circulation of water through small amounts of carbon will remove significant amounts of color.

Any ideas on how to achieve "slow" circulation? I've been trying to figure out how I should utilize carbon in my system. I'd love some good feedback.

By the way, great articles Sea monkey. Thanks for posting them.

[Sea monkey]

hard to know what "slow" means, slow mean dosing pump or mj 900 ...

from the few threads i ready last night, it sounded like the reason why the irregular shaped pieces were better is because they have much more surface area for the same volume of carbon.

[armagedon48]

"Acknowledgments. I wish to thank Jeff Voet of Tropical Fish World of Raleigh, North Carolina for his assistance in selecting and procuring many of the GACs used in this review. References will be included next month in part two."
I know this guy!!! i have gone to fish world many times and they are really good!

[David Grigor]

Those Phosban reactors and other brand ones will probably be a good choice for slow run about $40 without pump.

Guetto stye: could look at using an 10" RO canisters with a refillable catridge and feed it with a aqualifter pump would likely be slow enough too.


I too have a BIG OLE Bucket of the Kent. Since I rarely use carbon except for during medications like flatworm exit or interceptor treatement, I'm totally fine with it.

[Morty]

I've mostly used Seachem. I put it in a HOT Magnum canister and periodically run it overnight, and I've found that one canister can be used many times over. But I needed to glue some fine mesh over the slots in the back of the canister to help keep it contained because it comes as small round pellets (about #10 shot size).

It might also work well in a slow-flow fluidized scenario (like a phosban reactor) because of its shape.

[Morty]

(One other thing -- Harker talks about not using carbon in a power filter because the water is passing across it too quickly. He used the example of a HOT 250 gph. But that is the rate that's passing thru the 1/2" outlet. The canister has a surface area of something like 55 sq. inches., so the rate going across teh canister's total surface is something like 3-4 gph.)

[Sea monkey]

i wonder after head how much a mj900 pushes through a Phosban reactor