Does carbon bleach your corals ? (Kent carbon recall)

[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.

[daniella3d]

I think I will increase my lighting since what ever is exposed to the light seem to be doing better and coloring up faster.

If your coral are coming back and your MH is on 10 hours, I guess it is safe for mine to be on longer then.

thanks a lot

Originally Posted by 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.

[Casey8]

Originally Posted by daniella3d

I think I will increase my lighting since what ever is exposed to the light seem to be doing better and coloring up faster.

If your coral are coming back and your MH is on 10 hours, I guess it is safe for mine to be on longer then.

thanks a lot

You're very welcome. I hope all your corals will recover soon like mine. You never know, more than half of my corals were completely bleached have no life on them, but now they are all coming back to life. I call it a MIRACLE !

[daniella3d]

I have some that have melted so there is no coming back for them and of course my photosynthetic sponges are gone too but the rest of my acroporas seem to be coming back slowly. What a mess My first tank crash and it's not even my fault.

Originally Posted by Casey8

You're very welcome. I hope all your corals will recover soon like mine. You never know, more than half of my corals were completely bleached have no life on them, but now they are all coming back to life. I call it a MIRACLE !

[Casey8]

Originally Posted by daniella3d

I have some that have melted so there is no coming back for them and of course my photosynthetic sponges are gone too but the rest of my acroporas seem to be coming back slowly. What a mess My first tank crash and it's not even my fault.

One thing I have learned from this crash, I will never dose anything in the same day with my water change. Luckily enough I was doing water change and changed the carbon on different days, I had a chance to suspect about the carbon and pulled it out fast enough. Even so, it took me a day and a half before I decided to turn off the reactor. If I changed that carbon on the same day, I would have never suspected it right away and may have blamed for the water polluttant or something else. I would have killed all the corals if I continued to let that carbon sit in my tank even just for one more day. My tank was look like having a snow storm all over my corals in just 2 days, most of them were completely bleached. I was devastated didn't know what was going on my tank with no clue at that time. From now on, I will dose everything like calcium, magnesium, kalwasser, etc ... that is new in the bottle or container, one at the time and wait for a reaction before dosing another. If something goes wrong at least I know right away what is the cuprit.

[daniella3d]

It's a good thing you posted here because from the beginning because that might have avoided a tank crash to other people. Was too late for us and a few others.

It's hard sometimes to pin point a crash. I suspect that this is not the first time it happen to people but just like me they were in doubt that carbon could cause this and never really did the connection to their crash due to carbon.

At least now with this story, we know for sure that carbon can be nasty and kill everything so in the future people are going to be aware of this possibility and risk.

On every new batch of Seachem carbon I will use, I now will test for copper after letting run in a bucket 24 hours.

Originally Posted by Casey8

One thing I have learned from this crash, I will never dose anything in the same day with my water change. Luckily enough I was doing water change and changed the carbon on different days, I had a chance to suspect about the carbon and pulled it out fast enough. Even so, it took me a day and a half before I decided to turn off the reactor. If I changed that carbon on the same day, I would have never suspected it right away and may have blamed for the water polluttant or something else. I would have killed all the corals if I continued to let that carbon sit in my tank even just for one more day. My tank was look like having a snow storm all over my corals in just 2 days, most of them were completely bleached. I was devastated didn't know what was going on my tank with no clue at that time. From now on, I will dose everything like calcium, magnesium, kalwasser, etc ... that is new in the bottle or container, one at the time and wait for a reaction before dosing another. If something goes wrong at least I know right away what is the cuprit.

[daniella3d]

I got the result from my water analysis.

I got my water analyzed by a professional lab and the result show an abnormal concentration for copper especially.

The column named Daniella is my current aquarium water after 7 water changes and addition of polyfilter for a few days. The colum named "charbon" (carbon) is the result of analysing the water that come from a clean food grade container that had one gallon of water with 1/4 cup of well rinsed Kent Reef carbon running for 10 hours. I had put about one cup in my aquarium.

The result of 346 ug/l translate to .346 mg/l of copper, way too much and the reason why my corals died and bleached.

I guess this proof that more carbon than what they have in their recall list is affected since the expiration date on my container is EX21NO14, which is not in the list.

Magnaneese and kicket released is also a bit high with this carbon, but it is the copper that is to blame for the coral death. I am going to send a sample of the carbon and this lab result to Kent tomorrow.

[Casey8]

Originally Posted by daniella3d

It's a good thing you posted here because from the beginning because that might have avoided a tank crash to other people. Was too late for us and a few others.

It's hard sometimes to pin point a crash. I suspect that this is not the first time it happen to people but just like me they were in doubt that carbon could cause this and never really did the connection to their crash due to carbon.

At least now with this story, we know for sure that carbon can be nasty and kill everything so in the future people are going to be aware of this possibility and risk.

On every new batch of Seachem carbon I will use, I now will test for copper after letting run in a bucket 24 hours.

Good thing Kent has recalled their carbon in a week after our crash, if not people here may think I and Daniella are crazy !

[paddyob]

Recall posted on BAs site in regards to Kent carbon.

http://www.bigalscanada.com/recalls/..._Retailers.pdf