all hail carbon!! why?
 

so am i the only person that cannot for the life of me, notice the great clarifying benefits of carbon? all other posts i read about people saying how great it is. i've been running it now, on and off(mostly on) for the last 6 months or so and for the life of me...if i quit, i really don't think i would notice a difference.

can anyone else out there say the same?

I run carbon but not for clarity. Since I have a mixed reef I use it to absorb toxins and minimize the chemical warfare that is going on in my tank. For clarity I use 200 micron prefilter socks hooked in to the overflow pipe in my sump.

I use Chemipure once in a while, especially when I suspect there is some kind of chemical warfare or release going on (ie. when my Sea Hare spewed purple dye into the tank).

Anthony

i'm cutting back my carbon ussage considerably because my softies have been reacting adversely against it.

interesting...what sort of reactions?

I thought the same thing until I started running carbon in a phosban reactor. The difference for me was night and day, its much more efficient than having it in a bag in the sump IMO.

Greg, would the socks not just removed detritus, which certainly would add to the clarity of the water, and not the yellowing of the water, which I believe carbon is suppose to remove?

I wonder if one put it in a sump compartment with floss and have the return water running direct onto it, would have the same effect as a reactor?

I must agree though. I sometimes wonder about our use of carbon. You read where sps have bleached because of the carbon removing yellow water, {which is hard to see with the naked eye, unless side by side}, when used only occasional.

Then you see other beautiful sps tanks, that swear by not using carbon?

Snappy, re: carbon, how much and how long do you leave it in?

Doug,
Good point, I never thought of that as I've never had yellow water.
The socks help keep the bubbles down as well and gets rid of all the little "floaties."
I doubt I'd bother with carbon if I only kept sps.

Mark,
I use about 3 cups worth and change it once a month.

At one point my softies had some troubles. Some of the toadstools wouldn't extend their polyps (the smaller ones), and the palys would stay closed, and the finger leather would go in and out a lot.

I was talking to albert about carbon, and he said not to use a liter of carbon in my tank, because that would "rape" my softies. I discovered the correlation that I was running a liter of carbon when my softies were having problems, and it was probably the thing "raping" them :)

So yesterday I'd cut back on my carbon by putting the HOB filter it's in on a timer to only run 2 hours a day. I'll see how things change in the next few weeks. If nothing changes, I'm just going to leave it that way.

Hmm, thats interesting, as mentioned, I have read several sps aquarists saying that also.

I wonder if its our use of larger skimmers and/or other filtration methods, as compared with filtration many moons ago, when carbon was a mainstay of the canister filters.

I,ve been using it for so long, I would be scared not to but who knows what its doing related to the amounts we use?

well i never used it for the first couple years i kept sps and never had any issues with yellow water or chemical warfare or whatever and that was in a 25g tank.

that's why i originally posted this question...because i really don't see any tangible benefit. with regular water changes, i never got yellow water anyhow. so am i just wasting time and money by the adding carbon?

I would say thats the most important factors in this discussion.

I stopped using carbon in my tank for about 4 months now and wow my softies love it!

I also do regular water changes and have not had to add any supplements, nor have I noticed any yellowing.

I wouldn't say I notice yellowing without carbon, but I do notice an improvement in water quality if I put in new carbon. I'm not sure how long the effect lasts though. It's not really that long, maybe a couple of days tops.

However I would say that it's probably useless to just have carbon passively - you need to drive flow through it. Ie., even having it in a baffle isn't probably good enough because water will just flow around it instead of through it. It has to be in a filter, either a phosban reactor or an aquaclear or a cannister filter.

what improvements do you notice?

The water just seems to be clearer. It's hard to describe. The tank has a brighter look to it.