Really yellow water

[BowedFloor]

So I've got fairly yellow water (noticable when you are drip acclimating a fish into a white bucket)

I am guilty of neglect and not running carbon for a while.

I bought a MR5 from avast marine, and so that holds 5 cups of carbon.

I've had it running with slower flow through the sicce 1.0 pump. probably 100ml/s flow rate.

My question is, when do I know my carbons at full capacity?

Since carbon is cheap, should I just swap it out every 2 weeks until water quality improves along with water changes?

 

[heathlindner25]

Cheap carbon is full of po4, I learned that the hard way...

 

[ReefsandGeeks]

That's pretty much what I do. There's no test kits that measure what carbon takes out, so you cant monitor your levels to se when the carbon is exhausted. I replace mine every 3-4 weeks but if I had a known issue like you do every other week would probably work well. If you wanted a boost to get it better quicker, you could always do a larger water change, at the cost of effort and salt.

 

[C.Eymann]

Cheap carbon is full of po4, I learned that the hard way...

+1 phosperic acid used to wash after cooking.


If using carbon for water polishing I usually yank it after 48 hours, read from many sources that after 48 hours it loses its polarity and loses a larger percent of its ability to absorb organics

 

[lespaul339]

I run carbon 24/7 in a refillable BRS canister filter. I replace the carbon about once a month. I rise it out with r.o. water a few times in between when the flow in the carbon filter gets clogged and gets slow. I should add that I work in the water conditioning industry, so I use a very high grade catalytic carbon.

 

[BigEZ77]

If your water is really yellow, then the first batch of carbon will likely exhaust much quicker than if you were using it consistently. Once the water clears up, I would change it again, and then continue to change every 2 weeks to a month. I run a little bit of Seachem Matrix Carbon and a small bag of Chemipure Blue which is a bit more expensive but supposed to last longer. Says they both last a couple months but I change once a month.

 

[Reef Frog]

If I was in that situation, I'd do WCs -ne run carbon afterward. I'd also skim wet and consider trying Seachem Purigen. It changes color when exhausted and can be cleaned up and reused. It apparantly can capture certain dissolved orgsnics that GAC misses.