[Wet Thumb Forum]-Activated carbon

[wetmanNY]

Surely carbon that leaches all but untestable amounts of PO4 is widely available, is it not? Greg Schiemer tested quite a few activated carbons for the amount of phosphate they leached (all carbons do leach some). The results are edifying. They were in Aquarium Frontiers in 1997 archived at: http://www.animalnetwork.com/fish2/a...ct/default.asp

Leo Morin, of Seachem, had some interesting contributions about phosphate and activated carbon a few years back: his interview with Bruce Hallman is at http://www.hallman.org/filter/carbon.html

There's a fundamental inconsistency here: having avoided activated carbon because it leaches undesirable phosphate on a Monday, one could take out the Fleet enema on a Tuesday and squirt a little urgently-required phosphate into the system...

[This message was edited by wetmanNY on Sun March 23 2003 at 09:21 PM.]

[imported_Allen]

Hmmm... I must say that this has been interesting to say the least. I myself have always avoided the use of activated carbon because "it would bind nutrients"... but these articles are forcing me to rethink this...

You do bring up a good point on the test done by Keslar... was the the carbon acting on the chelates or the ion itself... was there any follow up done? I couldn't find any...

Allen
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