Does carbon bleach your corals ? (Kent carbon recall)

[kien]

Originally Posted by globaldesigns

Yeah, who woulda thought! The past couple years of coral issues, massive die off, and loss of $$$$... And maybe it was the Kent carbon all the time. I never thought carbon would be the problem, and have used Kent almost since the begininning.

I am not even going to bother with ROX, or a higher quality brand. Carbonless seems to be working for me, and I am really tired of losing coral, so I am going to leave it as is.

And not necessarily Kent alone. If I recall correctly, Coral Master/Snappy had a major SPS die off event a couple of years ago as well and the only thing he recalled switching up was trying some new carbon that was on sale on Boxing Day that winter. If it can happen to Kent carbon it stands to reason that it could happen to any carbon produced in a similar fashion ?!? This would explain so much! That is, you could be using carbon happily for months or years and then just happen to dump in a bad batch out of the blue!

The one good thing that has come out of this in my mind is the fact that Kent owned up to it an explained clearly exactly how carbon could be eff'ed up! If they had not come forward to acknowledge fault we'd still be scratching our heads and would probably never think to blame carbon for our woes. Unfortunately I'm worried about all carbons now :-|

[daniella3d]

I wonder if Seachem carbon is manufactured the same way and if it run the same risk?

It is very scray and disapointing

The whole purpose of carbon is something we trust will remove contaminants from our tank, not to contaminate it more to the point everything die.

Originally Posted by kien

Unfortunately I'm worried about all carbons now :-|

[kien]

Originally Posted by daniella3d

I wonder if Seachem carbon is manufactured the same way and if it run the same risk?

It is very scray and disapointing

The whole purpose of carbon is something we trust will remove contaminants from our tank, not to contaminate it more to the point everything die.

I don't think that it'll be easy to tell if a particular batch of carbon is good or bad

Another thing I'm worried about now is, once you put bad carbon into your tank, how easy would it be to get all that nasty stuff out??? It's almost like you have to flush the tank just to be sure.

[Casey8]

Originally Posted by kien

I don't think that i'll be easy to tell if a particular batch of carbon is good or bad

Another thing I'm worried about now is, once you put bad carbon into your tank, how easy would it be to get all that nasty stuff out??? It's almost like you have to flush the tank just to be sure.

No wonder my skimmer had pulled a lot of black colored in the first 2 days.

[daniella3d]

That's what I want to know. I will have my water analysed by a pro lab Thursday. I had done this analyse for heavy metal and all metal about a month ago, so I will be able to compare. We will also run carbon in a bucket and anayle that water, just to see how much of the metal could have leached.

My greatest concern is if the liverock have absorbed these heavy metal. I will now use polyfilter for a few months until my system return to total normality.

You don't have to flush the tank. I will post here my result on my tank as how far this contaminant went and how much of it still remain.

Originally Posted by kien

I don't think that it'll be easy to tell if a particular batch of carbon is good or bad

Another thing I'm worried about now is, once you put bad carbon into your tank, how easy would it be to get all that nasty stuff out??? It's almost like you have to flush the tank just to be sure.

[George]

Kent is recalling their carbon...
http://www.kentmarine.com/news/news-...arine-reef.htm

[Lampshade]

Wow, i tried new lights..... i tried new biopellets... i tried new powerheads.... I did 100+ gallons of water changes this month... and the whole time it was my damn carbon. Well, at least this way i had an excuse to buy a whole bunch of stuff for the tank. And now i can hopefully recover most of my SPS other than the 4-5 lost colonies.

The concern is that the batch of carbon contained unusually high levels of heavy metals which have an adverse effect on stony corals and clams in marine settings.

And all this time i though carbon sucked trace minerals out of my water....

Kent carbon in the garbage, any chance of me buying Kent ANYTHING again? NEVER!

I'm running out of brands to buy stuff from... so many ways to crash a reef tank and frustrate a reefer.

[daniella3d]

Hey casey, how are your corals doing? are they coming back from the bleaching? Mine is a mixed bag. Some are improving and some seem to be going worse and bleaching still.

What is strange is that the corals are bleaching where the light does not reach, from underneat, so I am not sure if I should increase the light instead because what is exposed to light seem to be regaining a bit of color.

I really don't know what to do now. Seem the coral are missing a lot of zooxanthellae.

Originally Posted by Casey8

No wonder my skimmer had pulled a lot of black colored in the first 2 days.

[Casey8]

Originally Posted by daniella3d

Hey casey, how are your corals doing? are they coming back from the bleaching? Mine is a mixed bag. Some are improving and some seem to be going worse and bleaching still.

What is strange is that the corals are bleaching where the light does not reach, from underneat, so I am not sure if I should increase the light instead because what is exposed to light seem to be regaining a bit of color.

I really don't know what to do now. Seem the coral are missing a lot of zooxanthellae.

I could say I am very lucky. All of them are slowly coming back to life, their color are getting back about half way now. At least I can easily recognize what they were before. Only one, and that is my favorite one, it seems to be struggling to survive. Most part of the coral is covered with brown algae, only 1 small branch is showing a very slight color under T5 lights. I didn't use any carbon right now even I have already switched to a new brand. I got scared from using any brand and I may just follow what some people are doing, no need for carbon in my tank for a while.
My skimmer is also getting back to normal color, it doesn't skim nasty dark color with some black small particles on the skimmer neck like last week. I felt very lucky to get this beast in time to deal with this disater.
As lampshade has said, and me too, no more Kent product for me from now on.

[Casey8]

Daniella, I have been reducing my MH lights only 2 hours a day. I used to let them run 12 hours, but now 10 hours. I am going to go back slowly to normal lighting starting next week. If you think your corals are doing better with more lights, I think you can do just like me, just slowly get back to normal.
My tank is a BB tank, I think when something goes wrong it is easier to deal with. Maybe I am wrong but that's what I thought. I can siphon the bottom of the tank many times a day if I want to, without worrying disturbing the sand bed. Water change is also easy for me too.