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.
