CichlidFish.com - Fish That Think.

how should i rinse the carbon dust before putting it in the tank?

I rinse mine in the filter bag. First I spray water through it useing the sprayer on my sink faucet. Once it apears clear, I fill a container with fish tank temp water, and commence dipping the charcoal until it no longer stains the water. On a side note, For a month now I have not been using the charcoal. There are more and more ppl switching to not using it, the true worth of charcoal in a healthy tank is quite open for debate. Myself I am just testing out some of the theroies that are currently out there in regards to not using it.

if not carbon then wut can i use to make the water crsytal cleaR?

Originally posted by FishBait912
if not carbon then wut can i use to make the water crsytal cleaR?

I use floss -- just stuff it in the same container you put the carbon in. I forget whether you're using a canister or not. But in a good, well balanced established aquarium with proper maintenance the water stays clear anyway. There's a hundred things that can cause it to cloud up, certainly, but on three of my four 55s I only use the little Aqua-Tech (Wal*Mart) filter cartriges to (basically) pre-filter the biowheels, and the water stays very clear. I've run that particular setup since I learned that Aqua-Tech and Penguin parts were interchangeable in about 1997, so in about 8 years there's been no problem keeping the water clear.

I have a theory about Carbon, but since I'm an "enthusiast" rather than an expert I don't really know if it's true -- but I think that carbon use can wreck your cycle. To keep your tank established, you need to keep your nitrifying bacterias alive, and they need the ammonia and nitrite to stay alive. You have to have a certain amount of ammonia being turned into nitrite being turned into nitrate in order to keep the colonies alive to be able to keep the ammonia/nitrite levels low enough (0?) for a healthy tank. So, by adding carbon (or a lot of carbon) to the filter, and removing the ammonia, aren't we "starving" the bacteria and throwing the aquarium into sort of a flux? Just a thought --

--Mark:cool:

im using a hob but yea after hearing about carbon im thinking of taking it out now. and leaving it alone