Just a note in case you have the issue: when you ask a 'remover' of This n That to remove stuff from your tank, a really big consideration is 'when does the absorbtion medium reach saturation' and get to the full-up with crud stage?
The answer is variable depending on the absorbtion rate of the remover-stuff and how bad your situation is. I've seen carbon deplete in a week. Ditto Phosban, pretty well the same.
So you can say you're 'running carbon' or 'GFO/[Phosban]' or whatever, but if it's saturated, it can sit in your tank the next year or three without absorbing much of anything. Think of it as like a coffee cup of badness: when it's full, it can't take any more, and it just sits: worse, it can even start to break down through age and put everything it sucked up right back into your tank. Carbon can break down (which is why you change it on a reasonable schedule---I never leave it in longer than a month. And unfortunately a little black bag of carbon is real easy to forget about. So jot 'installed carbon' and 'removed carbon into your handy-dandy logbook of tests and trivia and you'll remember that bag. Most absorbers just stop absorbing and sit there forever, but carbon does have that drawback.
Personally, I rate a week or two of 'absorber' or 'treatment' as likely to have saturated out of usefulness for a first dose on a bad problem; then I just lengthen the time dose by dose, up to 4 weeks for time to work. Yes, it's expensive to replace the dose after a week, but it's also a shame to sit and wait for it to do something when it's already done all it can and time's a-wasting.
The answer is variable depending on the absorbtion rate of the remover-stuff and how bad your situation is. I've seen carbon deplete in a week. Ditto Phosban, pretty well the same.
So you can say you're 'running carbon' or 'GFO/[Phosban]' or whatever, but if it's saturated, it can sit in your tank the next year or three without absorbing much of anything. Think of it as like a coffee cup of badness: when it's full, it can't take any more, and it just sits: worse, it can even start to break down through age and put everything it sucked up right back into your tank. Carbon can break down (which is why you change it on a reasonable schedule---I never leave it in longer than a month. And unfortunately a little black bag of carbon is real easy to forget about. So jot 'installed carbon' and 'removed carbon into your handy-dandy logbook of tests and trivia and you'll remember that bag. Most absorbers just stop absorbing and sit there forever, but carbon does have that drawback.
Personally, I rate a week or two of 'absorber' or 'treatment' as likely to have saturated out of usefulness for a first dose on a bad problem; then I just lengthen the time dose by dose, up to 4 weeks for time to work. Yes, it's expensive to replace the dose after a week, but it's also a shame to sit and wait for it to do something when it's already done all it can and time's a-wasting.
