jnarowe
New member
Oh yeah, I remember you got a club deal or something right?
I am learning a lot about carbon from various sources both within the aquarium hobby and in other fields, and finding some interesting stuff.
Imagine if you are having water quality issues, perhaps HA, dinos, etc. What would be the first thing that comes to mind? For me it would be to do a water change and swap out carbon to help boost water quality.
But if the carbon is leaching PO4 at the rate the pellets I tested was, then you could actually be exascerbating the problem rather than fixing it. It's a strange thought, but the more I research and test carbon and other media, the more I am finding out that things we commonly use could be causing us long term issues..
It's something like learning that water changes bring in new silicates, which actually encourages dinos to prosper. And to learn that many municipal water supplies actually add phosphates and ammonia is disturbing too. Then you try to clean it with RO/DI and the CO2 in the water may be eating up all your resin and allowing ammonia to pass through.
Then there's the salt mixes with such varying degrees of unwanted elements it's very difficult to really know what you are putting ito your system unless you test every batch of water you make.
I have a new "algae" in my system in just 3 spots. It is matted but vacuums out very easily. Sherman was over yesterday and commented that it may actually be something else like bacteria because of its localization and the fact that it is producing some gas. I have not been able to get a good pic unfortunately, but I will mention that I have eased off of water changes dramatically over the last to months to experiment a little.
I had been doing 85g per week and now I am doing 85g per month. I still am not comfortable with the stability of my tank in terms of alkalinity and I am working slowly to rectify that.
I am learning a lot about carbon from various sources both within the aquarium hobby and in other fields, and finding some interesting stuff.
Imagine if you are having water quality issues, perhaps HA, dinos, etc. What would be the first thing that comes to mind? For me it would be to do a water change and swap out carbon to help boost water quality.
But if the carbon is leaching PO4 at the rate the pellets I tested was, then you could actually be exascerbating the problem rather than fixing it. It's a strange thought, but the more I research and test carbon and other media, the more I am finding out that things we commonly use could be causing us long term issues..
It's something like learning that water changes bring in new silicates, which actually encourages dinos to prosper. And to learn that many municipal water supplies actually add phosphates and ammonia is disturbing too. Then you try to clean it with RO/DI and the CO2 in the water may be eating up all your resin and allowing ammonia to pass through.
Then there's the salt mixes with such varying degrees of unwanted elements it's very difficult to really know what you are putting ito your system unless you test every batch of water you make.
I have a new "algae" in my system in just 3 spots. It is matted but vacuums out very easily. Sherman was over yesterday and commented that it may actually be something else like bacteria because of its localization and the fact that it is producing some gas. I have not been able to get a good pic unfortunately, but I will mention that I have eased off of water changes dramatically over the last to months to experiment a little.
I had been doing 85g per week and now I am doing 85g per month. I still am not comfortable with the stability of my tank in terms of alkalinity and I am working slowly to rectify that.
