Does carbon bleach your corals ? (Kent carbon recall)
 

I was using Kent reef carbon corals for years without any problem until 2 days ago. I did water change on Monday evening, everything was fine and normal as usual. Tuesday afternoon, I changed the carbon. I used 1 cup for 100 gallons as instruction and as I normally do, so I am sure I didn't overdose it. But Wednesday morning, woke up and looked at the tank, all my sps corals were bleached. I did 25% water change right away. Today, I did another 25% water change because the corals look even more bleached. Even the hardest coral I have for more than 3 years and has been growing to almost 10 inch is also bleached more than half way :sad: I used to buy the smallest size of Kent reef carbon, but this time I bought a 1 gallon container, and that was the first time I was using it on Tuesday. I don't think buying smaller size or bigger size is different from the quality of it. But I had turned off the carbon today, because I thought it must be from using this carbon, there is no reason for me to think anything else. Checked the water quality, everything was fine.
I had spent too much time and money on corals. If I loose all the corals this time, I think I will go with fish only tank. I have been unlucky with them :cry:
Hope anybody here can give me some clues what is happening to my corals.

Same here...kent carbon...most coral are pale and some bleached. All my photosynthetic sponges are dead! My pink digitata is nearly white and show no polyp extension. Polyp extension is very low even on my shaggy acropora which is not shaggy anylonger. I put Kent carbon, go to sleep and wake up to that mess.

Never again will I use that crap. What's in it that could cause this? I used all sort of brand of carbon before without any visible effect...ever.

I removed the carbon and did 2 30% water change but it might take many water change to stop the bleaching. Now things have seem to stabilize but it will take months for some of the coral to recover, if they ever do. My blue haliclona photosynthetic sponges are gone. had them for 2 years :(

A lot of the time the coral bleaching is from your water getting much more clear, allowing a big change in light intensity on your coral. It is very odd that it's kent though, would explain some issue's I've had recently with the same stuff. Bleaching tips on some coral like milli's, but lots of others are fine.

Not in my case. a few months ago I did 2 side by side water change 25% and no coral bleached, everything was beautiful and healthy. I had to get the nitrates lower due to a large foxface (sold) polluting my tank.

Beside, if you put the carbon in the evening and in the morning you wake up to this mess...can't be the light because it is closed at night.

It is obvious it was the carbon in my case...nothing else was added or hapened. Beside...my blue sponges died! what can kill a blue sponge??? surely not the clarity of the water. I have put chemiclean often during the past 2 years and the water become crystal clear, and that never affected my sponges nor any of my corals. Something nasty in that kent stuff...

BTW, I too bought the large container. Can there be something not right in there?

Thanks for your input, Daniel. I just got a new brand Marineland carbon. I had used this brand since I first started in this hobby. Now all I am hoping is I can save some of the corals left. All my favorite corals are bleached out so badly, they completely turned white today. The ones that I don't care very much are still having some faded color on them :twised: Life is like that, always lost something that you cared about and loved the most, same thing happened with fish too.

Good luck with your system. It has been about a week for mine and it is still acting wierd. I now have some brown stuff covering some corals so I am guessing some of my digitata died as well.

It would be important to find out what is causing this and if any others have had similar reaction. I did not even talk about it at first because I was a bit skeptical about carbon causing this but now that you talk about your own experience with it, then it makes me beleive that my thoughts that it was the carbon were right.

I am glad you had chimed in that you had the same problem with this Kent carbon too. If not, I may have thought I am the only one complaining about bleaching corals for using bad carbon. Nothing I can do about coral's bleaching now, I just hope whatever I have left are recovering soon.

I once had a shaggy acropora bleach completely and no polyp extension after I took it from one tank to the other without any acclimatation. I did not care about it because under T5 it was all brown and really ugly. It remained for about a month like that and after a month the polyps started to come out and that coral is gorgious today. It has grown about 10 times the size. It took about 2 months to color up to a very nice bleu/green with purple tips under metal halide.

So there is hope :)

I will return that carbon to the store for a refound and tell them what hapened and that I am not the only one and will take the Seachem carbon instead.

That's very interesting I have never heard that before. I would wonder if there is anyway to show this via PAR readings or some other way to test light penetration into the water pre and post water treatment.

I used Kent for years and years. Mo bleaching. Ever.

Temperature and too much light are usual suspects.

Highly doubt it's the carbon.


Bleaching is usually human error in tanks.

I've got the same thing happening to a few SPS in my tank too. Bulbs are over a year old so I would have thought if it were the bulbs it would go the other way (browning out). I've been using the same 5gal pail of Kent carbon for at least a year though so I can't really say its the carbon attributing to it (unless I got overzealous and used too much). Odd that this is a coincidence though.

I always over use carbon. Always.

Maybe I have not had the same issues as I always use carbon and always have, so my water is always duper super clear.

I can see the increased clarity being a POSSIBLE culprit if you have never used carbon before.

But even when I switched to ROX, I never had a single issue. And ROX definitely made my water much, MUCH clearer than Kent ever did.

Before settling on carbon as the issue explore your heater/thermometer. Maybe that's an issue. Carbon is not the cause of bleaching in nature, so maybe try narrow down other factors.

As again, I highly doubt it's the carbon.

It's always easier to blame our equipment before ourselves.

temperature? My temperature is stable day and night at 76.5 F.

The OP used this carbon for years without problem before this hapened. I have been using other brand of carbon without problem (seachem), in fact, I never had any problem with my corals or reef since the beginning 2 years ago.

Too much light? No I doubt it in my case since it hapened during the night and there was no change of ligth previously either. My 250 watt Phoenix 14 has been there for 4 months and corals were thriving, acropora growing 1" per month previous to the addition of carbon.

it's definitly something else.

Dead toll: xenia all gone, bleue haliclona sponges all gone, pink digitata nearly all gone. Orange and purple digitata just fine, birdnest never affected and SPS coming back with great polyp extension but still pale and have lost color. LPS and zoanthids doing great now.

This hapened about 5 days ago and I did 30% water change monday, and 30% water change tuesday...Now corals are coming back. Such drastic water change and the corals are feeling better?? now what nasty stuff was in my tank that could have caused this? Only thing I could do is to have this carbon analyzed. Or do another test in another tank with corals I don't really care for.

Previous to the addition of the carbon, the evening I replaced the Seachem carbon by the Kent, all my corals were doing fantastic. Xenia were pumping, I had awesome polyps extention as usual. The only thing that hapened is the kent carbon, no change in temperature, PH, etc...no change in the dosing. I tested for salinity, alkalinity and mag and all were as they are usually. Maybe a bad batch of carbon? If it is a coincidence, then it is a very strange one...if it is a coincidence then what could have caused this? No other factors were present. This hapened overnight, no light involved in the event. No PH or temperature swing either.

I have been using Seachem carbon for 2 years.

Oh I totally agree. However like I said, I'm well into that 5gal bucket of Kent (and I've used Kent for about 7ish years now) and its not like I hit a "bad spot" or something to be just causing problems now. There are always a myriad of weird things going on with my tank and problems never get nailed down to any single thing. I'm not even sure why I posted to fuel the fire. Bored I guess. :razz:

I agree. But I just don't see carbon being the issue.

During the night... Maybe corals fighting. Killing parts off. Dead corals lose color too.

Also, too much light is a suggestion. I would still lean to heat spikes.

I had to remove an unfaithful finnex.


Has anyone done extensive research on natures bleaching? Perhaps there are some similar factors we duplicate in tanks. Like pollution.

Can anyone educate us better?

I'm no expert on this issue, just trying to help.

isn't this the nature of the hobby in general? Detritus happens.

But assuming you are right about coral war...there was a lot of fresh carbon in there so it would have absorbed what ever chimical from a coral war.

For exemple, my shaggy acropora had a deep dark blue/green base color, now it is all washed out, no more trace of blue in the flesh and the purple tips are bearely visible. That coral is going to have to regain its color back for sure. Now the base color is sort of a grayish flesh but the polyps are still green.

It's not like parts of the corals died either. It's an overall loss of color but the coral is still alive and now making a come back.

I had a multicolor acropora millepora that was striking in colors. It has flashy pink, purple, blue and green hue...now it's livid light green with livid light brown on top. It's like all the nice colors have vanished.

In the morning, most of my SPS has their polyps in and filaments out. I could see something was very wrong.

And what can make xenia melt like that?? It shriveled and died in one night. this is highly unusualy for me as my xenia were growing like weeks and my bleues sponges been thriving for 2 years. What can kill a blue sponge?? I even used a few time Chemiclean in that tank to clear up cyano and that did not affect the sponges. I had an episode of dino and raised the PH a lot to kill that and it did not affect my sponges, nor my xenias.

Now what?

And it's definitly not the temperature, because especially at night my temperature is stable and not affected by the MH light. But even in summer my temperautre is very stable at no more than 77F.

10,000$ loss in coral due to kent carbon??
 

guys...read this:

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2134021

seems we are not alone and I am really angry at this company. I lost all my beautiful blue sponges, lost my 3 rare pink digitata...can't replace them!

Its like being a reef hemophilliac... someone suggests an issue and suddenly a chunk of people all have it.

Just be careful you are not spreading false accusations.

I never had a single issue, and I am sure more people have had positive results than negative.

If you have a concern, why not contact them and see if this is factual. Or contact the store you bought it at.

If there is a serious issue.... there would be a recall.

If there is no recall then 1000's upon 1000's of people who use a popular and easily available product would also have the same issue. Not just a handful of people.

Before being angry at Kent, maybe make sure you have proof or fact that it was your CARBON.

I recently switched from kent, as I mentioned, and it was a good product.

It does seem like very few people on here had the same issue. Even ten or fifty individuals with similar issues are nothing compared to the multitudes of people with zero problems with the product, such as myself.

Anyhow... removing myself from the carbon bag.

Good luck with your issues. Hope its not the carbon!

you never had issue but obviously a lot of people do, even those have have been using this carbon for 7 years like that store owner.

I did contact them today and waiting for their response.

In any case, this is super easy to prove...the proof is in the pudding. I do have the carbon with me. The store owner has sent some of the carbon to kent marine for analyse and we should soon find out what is causing havock with this carbon.

Kent Marine is aware of the situation and they will surely ..well hopefully do something about it. I will post their reply here once and if they do reply.

So far I have about 2000$ loss in coral :(

Probably not all of Kent carbon is bad, but probably some batches are contaminated with something. Since people from NY are experiencing the same thing, I am guessing it is far more spread than you want to say. I live in Canada, not in the USA so some bad batch could be in the USA and in Canada and possibly elswhere.

Even if this was a false alert and everybody having issue are just dreaming a bad nightmare, it is better to be safe than sorry and not use this carbon for now.

Fair enough. Please post if Kent gets back to you.

Thanks for the link daniella, at least I know I am not the only one having trouble with Kent carbon. I still cannot believe what happened to my tank, because Kent carbon was my favorite for so many years. It is so sad :cry: !!I didn't loose $2,000 on corals like you, because I only pay $10, $15 for a frag, but to see them growing up and colored up with joy everyday, and now look at them dying from bleaching, it really breaks my heart :cry:
Please update if you get any more information from Kent. I should have kept a small sample from that bad carbon and send it to the Kent company to verify that I was not wrong.

I have plenty of this bad carbon left. Don't worry, they wrote in the other thread that the store owner have sent a sample to the company. I am keeping mine for sure, in case there is a need to analyse it.

I guess the important thing is to have proof of purchase if you don't have any carbon left.

I lost 2000$ worth in coral. That's the price I would need to pay to replace what I lost. I too started a few of these pieces with little frags but they were no little frags anylonger so they are not worth 30$ any longer. Even if you bought your corals are 10$ frag, they are worth a lot more when they grow large. It is that cost that you must calculate because replacing those pieces would cost that much.

Yah, you are right about that. It's not a $10 frag anymore !
My skimmer had pulled lots of black nasty color from that carbon in the last 2 days. Thank God, it is back to a normal color now.

I also had the sme issue when I switched to Kent, 1 afternoon I switch out the carbon, next morning serious colour loss. I simply turned off my carbon reactor, reduced my light duration, and kept a watchful eye.
Non of my corals died, but some where looking pretty stressed, no polyp extension, complete colour loss, small amounts of tissue recession.
But in a couple weeks things started to turn around, colour returning, polyps coming out. Now 3 months later everything is growing so fast I cant keep up, my colour has never been better, it crazy.

I reduced my ligth for one hour but I think I will reduce it a bit more.

How many hours did you reduce you light?

My pocillopora that I thought was not affected have started to lose tissue and I can see some patches of brown jelly now. wow...this is nasty.

A friend provided me his 40 lbs box of Kent Carbon when he shut down a few years ago (2006 maybe?). I didn't use all 40 lbs myself but I did use it exclusively for probably 3 years without issue. However I have heard cases where contaminates like metals have found their way into Carbon and caused coral death. For the last few years I've been using BRS Fine Lignite Carbon because it seemed like a better value.

I use the fluval carbon and I don't really know what it does (never been without) but I see no negative effects

Paddy, if you're so sure it isn't the carbon why don't you use some of Daniella's carbon in your reef? :p Anything is possible, and it sure seems suspect that there are so many people having troubles with their new container of Kent carbon in the last month or two. It will be interesting to see how this develops.

I jut ran out of Kent carbon a couple weeks ago, and decided to try out the Brightwell Aquatics carbon as I have really been liking their other products lately. It sounds like I was lucky for once! Whew.

My buddy rob (canuckgod420) mentioned this same issue on here a couple of months back after switching to kent carbon, EXACTLY the same thing happened!!!! he was on here looking for advice and NOBODY offered any....lol... now everyone chimes in....

Good news for you guys/ladies is that it will all come back around. We believe it is just that the carbon stripped the water too clean and allowed excessive light penetration which bleached the corals (like switching from t5 to MH or swapping to led and keeping the intensity to high from the get go.) It took weeks of frustration and heartache before his tank showed signs of coming back around. I believe he completely cut out the carbon... and his tank colors are AMAZING!!! now... growth is better then ever and his tank is once again top 3 I ever EVER seen!!!!!

lol.. I guess I should have read further and I would have seen that he chimed in already!

I thought someone had mentioned possible issues with Kent carbon awhile ago, but I was searching the forums and couldn't find it, so I figured I was imagining it. Now I'm going to go look again now I know who it was... :lol:

EDIT: Here is canuckgod420's experiences back in November... http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=80526

Try dragging a magnet thru the carbon and see if you get any metals?

wow... reef central thread store owner lost a ton of coral.... I really hope kent steps up to the plate and pays for or replaces everyones losses... everyone affected should write a mass email to them stating their displeasure! The more ppl that send to them what happened the better it is for them to investigate what went wrong...

Very smart Idea!!!

Thats funny Myka, you even posted a response to my thread.

Anyway, its all good now, everything looks great and growing fast.

I'm actually thinking of adding this carbon every few months to shock up the corals a bit and watch them explode in growth and colour again.

LMFAO!!! someone is looking to stir the pot I see.... muahhahahahaha... Although I gotta admit ur colors were nice before... and growth was good... however now ur colors pop amazingly and your growth tips are INSANE!!!

Having a bunch of disgruntled reef keepers suing for compensation is a good way to put a company out of business. I'm not sure I agree with that...take a look at what happened to PFO. I'm sure there are more people that miss PFO then there are that are mad.

Store owners should know better than to put $20K of coral in one system - that's a really bad idea. That's called laziness...it is easier to maintain one or two big systems than several smaller ones. You can't purchase much in the way of insurance on live corals or fish, so they have to create their own types of insurance. Multiple systems is the best insurance they can get. I still feel darn awful for the store owner who lost this huge investment, as well as the animals that died though. That is awful. :(

Yeah, I was really thinking I was losing it. I spent at least 20 minutes hunting for that thread before deciding I had lost my mind. Then jjntm mentioned your name and I found the thread in approximately 8 seconds! :o

Not possible in my case because i put the carbon in the evening where there was just the actinic T5 on, then when I woke up the light was not even on yet, but I could see something was wrong. EAch morning when I wake up the first thing I do is to check my aquariums.

It must be something else. I do not beleive that 8 hours of Kent carbon could have stripped so much from my water than corals were dying. I used carbon on regular basis since the beginning of that tank, but was using Seachem.

I beleive that something far more serious hapened here with some batch of Kent carbon. It could be some heavy metal, as I don't think that carbon can absorb copper or other toxic metal so it could have leached something like that. I just got my water analysed for heavy metal 3 weeks ago and it was perfect. I will have it check again just to be on the safe side.

When I saw this I immeditaly removed the carbon and did a 30% water change. That was the only thing I had done to the tank so it was the first thing I removed.

A lot of stores have common water in their system. I am not sure if you realize this but he lost 10k of coral worth...and it does not take that much in coral to reach that amount. I personaly have about 3k to 4k in corals worth. I lost about half so far.

I can think of plenty of coral stores here that would have the same exact issue because all their aquariums are connected with the same water. It is very common.

I don't think they do it out of laziness, probably more out of economical issue. It is less expensive to have a big central system I guess.

And your point may not be valid even if he had a few independant systems. Assuming he was doing the regular maintenance shedule of replacing carbon, what is to say that he would not have put new fresh carbon in all of his independant tanks killing everyting anyway?