Carbon - Yes or No?

[Aquattro]

Denny says some people don't need carbon. Is that true? Why? Or his he just making stuff up again?

Edit to Add: This is assuming good carbon, not the extremely rare contaminated carbon that might pop up once a decade

[JetJumper]

needed ... no
recommended.... yes

[Aquattro]

Denny says needed in some, not recommended in others. Large populated softies and over crowded SPS, yes, others, no.
Denny, feel free to clarify if I'm not reading properly

[Delphinus]

To me there's no question. If you want a tank to last you a long time, run carbon. Sorry Denny, on that one I can't agree.

Here's a good article about it.. http://joejaworski.wordpress.com/200...k-need-carbon/

[jorjef]

The color of the water I'm taking out during water changes tells me I'm suffering a bit on water clarity but not enough to worry when I look at the tank. I have run Rox in the past and still have quit a bit but quit using as I'm not sure if continued use would strip too much from the water or not. I have a heavily stocked LPS tank (coral wise not fish)

As usual in this hobby one persons results varies to everyone else but I haven't seen any negative effects since I quit using carbon.

[reefwars]

your reading correctly buddy


this should be a poll btw


carbon is good to have on standby in an emergency yes , i wouldnt say its needed for any setup to work, but in a tank loaded with softies or sps i would run it, where as in a tank more similiar to mine its not needed.

to be honest i dont trust carbn to use continuosly and none of my set ups use it , alot of people dont use carbon and alot do so its not that its bad for your system(except that one time remember???) just may not be something that you have to run.

if i had a choce over gfo or carbon which is what i was referring to anyways or even a mix of the two i would go full gfo 9 times out of 10 lol

come on theres got to be a buch of people who dont use carbon so its a fact that its not needed , and then theres the times carbon saved people during crashes so [eople need to decide for them selves if its what they want to run or not.

me im a no on carbon

[sphelps]

I've never run carbon religiously, once in a while sure but it's not required, my tanks have always done just fine without it.

I think some tanks will benefit more from it, like really mixed reefs that have lots of soft corals and SPS or tanks with high bio-loads, agressive feeding or undersized skimmers. Also if you're really anal about ULN then it might help you sleep better.

[Delphinus]

Originally Posted by reefwars

come on theres got to be a buch of people who dont use carbon so its a fact that its not needed

This line of reasoning is flawed. The real question is how long do those tanks last, that are setup without carbon use? If the goal is simply to eek a tank out for a few months to a year and then move on, then sure, maybe you can get away without carbon use, but that doesn't mean that there wouldn't have been a benefit had carbon been in there also.

I know there is some speculation between a link of excessive carbon use and HLLE but as far as I'm aware there has not yet been any causative link established, just speculation. And frankly, HLLE isn't that well understood anyhow. To me the definitive pros outweigh any speculative cons.

Read the article I linked, it has some informative insights regarding accumulation of organics over time that can't be skimmed out. Doesn't it make sense that "old tank syndrome" has a cause that could be conceivably related to that? What about allelopathy? It's not just softies tanks that are susceptible to this. Carbon can alleviate the effects of this.

What's the adversion to using carbon?

[lastlight]

Originally Posted by Delphinus

If the goal is simply to eek a tank out for a few months to a year and then move on

Geez that hit close to home! I'm actually not running carbon on my current tank for a while and will then try some after a few months to see if I notice any difference.

[Delphinus]

That's the thing, you probably won't notice a difference like that, at least not beyond the short term benefits of water clarity maybe. I'm talking about the kind of difference you notice after 5 years and "gee, this tank just doesn't sustain corals the way it used to. And all my parameters are fine so what gives?" ... I guess if it's a rare thing to push a reef tank beyond 5 years than I guess it's totally plausible to see so many questioning it.

Besides on a tank that size, doing a 100% water change to reboot the tank is something totally realistic too. This changes the playing field somewhat. So maybe yeah, in some cases, carbon isn't "necessary." But I still think there is benefit to its use in this case as well.