freshwaterguy

I have read a number of posts recently about Carbon not being required in freshwater tanks

I have carbon in my Juwel 125 and 240 which I replace every 3 weeks with Juwel original branded replacements (bought 18 monthly supply very cheaply)

I would like to know

1) would my fish and tanks benefit from doing away with the Carbon in the upper basket and using another corse Juwel blue filter (standard arrangement is 2 fine and 2 corse blue filters plus 1 carbon - plus white filter pad changed weekly)

2) what would the effect of doing away with the carbon achieve? clearer water perhaps

Thanks

Lucy

Carbon expires, when it does, it releases the toxins it's collected back into the water.

It's good to use when you need to filter meds out of the tank.

I hope that helps.

nitz

I've heard people say their water has gotten clearer when they took the carbon out of their filter and heard others say that it has gotten clearer when they put carbon into their filter. The carbon will get saturated at a certain point (length of time here is up in the air but the general consensus is 1-2 weeks) and start leaching everything back into the water. As Lucy said, carbon can be used for simply removing meds from your water. Since you have such a large supply of carbon, I'd say keep using it until you run out. Maybe you could change it out more often though to once every two weeks (I'm not sure if you change it every 3 weeks or every week as you've said both in your post. Sorry for reading it incorrectly) to be on the safe side. Another thing you could do is try taking out the carbon and replacing it with another filter pad (either coarse or fine, your choice) to see if your water quality changes. If it does for the better, then you can stop using the carbon, but if it changes for the worse, then you know that keeping the carbon in there is a good thing.

I hope that wasn't too jumbled and that it helps you.

freshwaterguy

lucy+nitz thanks when my carbon supply runs out I will stop using it nearly out of it now. Then will look at external\different filtration I think

Lucy

You can use the carbon in your fridge to help absorb odors.

sirdarksol

If changed out on schedule, carbon can scrub the extra garbage out of your water. The problem is that, if you forget to change it, it can dump all of that back into the water. So, if you are faithfully changing your carbon, you may actually find your water a little less clear (though, if you replace it with filter floss, there will be little difference).

One concern I have with carbon is that carbon dust can collect in human lungs, making breathing difficult (and causing the condition of "black lung" in the long run). I wonder if it can do similar things in the finely laced structure of the gills if not fully rinsed before use.

Chief_waterchanger

We use filter floss in the fishhouse, and as Sirdarksol said, it works great.

We put 2 small clumps in the single filter on a 220g tank and within a day the water was crystal clear, after being discolored the previous day.