Some Carbon use/light intensity observations for ya.

[Canadian Man]

Well here's the story.
I change my carbon on a monthly basis. When the month is almost up I do notice a green/yellow tinge to the water. For the past 4 month's I have been keeping track of my findings which are as follows.

-When my carbon is changed my Green star polyps, plate coral and Open Brain(which I have not had the full 4 month's) act difrently for the next few days after changing the carbon. The GSP's open in the morning (when the light's come on) and stay open for about 4 to 5 hours, they then close up for the rest of the "light's on period". when the light's go out they open back up again. The Plate coral react's in a similar maner with it's horizontal polyps closing later in the day. The brain coral takes on a more shrunken appearance but it's been lightening up over the past few month's anyway and expelling it's zooanthella every so often.

- Now I hope I understand the obvious explanation for what's happening. Basically the carbon cleans out the yellow's in the water allowing more light to penetrate the aquarium? Make Sense?

To all you people that don't use carbon, would knowing that if you used it on a regular basis you would get "MORE" out of your light's make you want to use it?

To all the people that do use carbon, do you notice similar finding's in your tank? How do you run the carbon?

The carbon used was/is Seachem carbon in a bag and it's in a spot in my sump that forces water through the carbon but not all the water is forced to pass through the carbon.

Let's here some thoughs.

[Aquattro]

Jon, I use carbon about 1 week per month. If I miss a month, I still do not get any yellowing of the water. I have gone 4 months before and did not see any coloring at all. I check this in a white bucket during water changes, where yellowing is often most apparent.
To note, I do not have any soft corals, and I believe they contribute more to this that SPS.
To answer your question though, I would use carbon to get full strength light in my tank.

[rossb]

Jon how much carbon do you go through in a month? Do you use carbon in addition to regular water changes? I'm thinking I might give this a try.

[Delphinus]

I always want to try to get back into using carbon, because it does seem to polish up that water column.

The problem for me is how to do it. It seems to me you want to force water through the filter bag. But if I put it at the top of a baffle, I find that unless I force ALL the water through it, the water merely just "goes around it." Ok, so I take little pieces of rock or whatever, acrylic, etc. to plug up all the holes, but then the problem is, I find the filter bag clogs wayyyy too quickly. Like, I have to take it out and scrub it clean every 1-2 days. That's way too maintenance intensive for my liking, I find even having to do something once a week to be a little tedious. The less I have to dink around with something, the better.

So I have tried serveral different things, I tried running carbon in an aquaclear, etc. I haven't yet stumbled onto a mechanism that seems to work for me problem-free (without having to intervene every 1-3 days).

So I guess MY question is, how are other people running carbon? How do you know you're getting enough water flow through the filter bag and not merely just around the filter bag? And so on.

Canadian_Man, in answer to your question, yes I would like to run carbon if I knew I was getting more light through the water column. The reasoning for me I think is pretty simple: the amount of investment we put into our lights (for purchase price and then for electricity every month), I want as much of what I'm buying to be available for the "consumers". It doesn't make sense to pay $10-$20 per month per bulb only to have some proportion of that reflected or absorbed away by other things. This is one reason I would never run a cover glass -- those things reflect away a lot of light. This is also a reason to consider spending more on good reflectors. And so on...

Plus, it really looks cool to see the water after it's been clarified. If the actual amount is hard to quantify, there is still just that subjective "gee this water looks really clean" factor.

[Acro]

Jonathan, Why not use the same amount of carbon but split it in half and change it out every two weeks instead? One of the best qualities of carbon is water clarity. For what it's worth I change out a small amount weekly.

[Delphinus]

Hey Jamie, how do you run your carbon? A filter bag in a baffle, or ... ?

And how often do you replace your filter bags? Never? Every month?

I'm just curious ... I found the clogging issues to be a major pain. I'd love to hear how people step around that issue. I found when I had a filter bag in a baffle, when it would start to clog, I'd start to get water level fluctuations in my sump (basically the last chamber would start to drain), so the water level would climb in the main display, and the salinity would start to drop a little because the float valve was now adding more water than was needed.

I lived with this at first, but then came to the conclusion that "there has to be a better way" and I kind of backburnered the carbon for now. But I would really like to get back into it.

[Doug]

Thats interesting Jon. I also have another possible theory, but would require you to run some more tests.

I would like to see the results, if everything remained the same and you switched to Marineland Black Diamond carbon.

[Acro]

Hello Tony,
I run carbon 24/7 changed out weekly. I'm only running about 2 small personal yogurt cups per week in a filter bag in a high flow area. I don't change the filter bags often. Though I just did as I was adding kalk in this same high flow area and it precipated on the bag but normally I don't change the bag just wash it with the weekly renewal.

[Canadian Man]

Originally Posted by rossb

Jon how much carbon do you go through in a month? Do you use carbon in addition to regular water changes? I'm thinking I might give this a try.

Hey Ross, I run about 1/3 of a litre so about 300ml of carbon. I purchase the 1L seachem bottles and that last's me 3 months. My waterchanges are very random in my tank.... I used to do them monthly then went to bi weekly and now it's been kind of a when ever I want to do it thing. I used to see a diffrence in the corals when I did a waterchange but I no longer see this perk up affect.

Brad, do you run a fuge? I have 1/3 of my 75g sump sectioned off as a refugium. I don't have very many softies in the tank at all, but the fuge is full of algae.

Tony, I find the actuall affects on the new carbon to be extremely noticeable. My water is not pea soup but I do notice the diffrence between before new carbon and after. So do some of the corals
With my carbon Tony I just change it montly and then I don't clean it or the bag at all. When I go to change the carbon the bag is not blocked with crap what so ever.

Jamie, The splitting it evey 2 weeks sounds good but that would require more effort . The one aspect of that I don't like is your always going to be keeping some portion of the old carbon in the bag. Correct?

Doug, I will pick up some Marineland carbon next time I switch it and see what happens... I just swithce the carbon a few days ago so It will be a few weeks till I switch it again.
What's your idea about the diffrence with marineland?

Thanks very much all!

[Acro]

Jonathan, Sorry if that was misleading. What I meant was completely replace the carbon do not save any of the old. As far as effort goes perhaps even more important then the carbon.

more effort = more results