Charcoal in a reef and fish tank?

hawkboys10

Reefing newb
do you all run charcoal in you setups? Right now I just moved and upgraded from a 75 to a 240 and have nothing but the blue flossy stuff as my filter and of coarse lots of live sand and rock. I have a bad fish smell in the house and the wife is hating it. I assume this smell with fade with water changes? Should I be using charcoal also? I had a lfs person tell me that corals haste charcoal??????
 
I do run carbon in my tank. it helps to keep the water nice and crisp looking. carbon will remove good elements from that water as far as i know so you would need to do frequent water changes and possibly dose for those elements.
 
Are you curing your new rock in the 240? Are you running a skimmer?

The smell might be coming from the new live rock until its cycled and cured.
 
curing LR in a tank just stinks up the place. It is a horrible smell. a skimmer will help, but, it will still stink. get some plug ins in the mean time and keep a window open. Run carbon, for sure. It will polish your water, just make sure you change it at least monthly. If I read it right, a 240 will need A LOT of carbon and a ghastly skimmer.

-Doc
 
Charcoal is good if you have a large bio load such as big fish, many fish and lots of coral. The experts recommend small amounts of charcoal changed very frequently rather than large amounts infrequently. IE use a little bit and cahnge every week versus once a month. Even though a new tank set up would fall into the large bioload category due to organic die off from the live rock and live sand the cycling tends to proceed better without carbon present and the beneficail bacterial levels seem to be highest at the end of cycling when carbon is not used during cycling. The better skimmer makers sell lids for their skimmers that hold carbon, principally for people using ozone, b=ut they work great with carbon to lessen the smell. A lot of air is pumped through a protein skimmer and that air picks up a lot of smell. And the charcoal will remove that smell.
 
My live rock was all cured before from my previous 75 gallona tank and the new stuff I used was dry new clean rock. I did use new sand however. I have not been consistant with the protein skimmer yet. I will get some carbon and try that. Has anyone ever tried a thing called exstink that claims to lower the amonia and nitrate levels and completely eliminate all odors.
 
Never heard of the stuff and I definitely could not beleive claims as broad as those. Ther are chemicals that detoxify the ammonia, such as Amquel. I would only consider them something to use in an emergency until I could get ammomia levels down through eater changes and reestablishment of a biological filtration system through recycycling. And then only to save the lives of existing fish in the tank.
 
Tip: My charcoal filter removes a lot of white slime from my tank but be careful when removing it. My charcoal filter removes so much that when I pull it out the slime literally slides off going back into the tank creating an ugly slime slick. Now, I pull it up and immediately put a bowl under it.
 
there is a product called prime that is supposed to reduce ammonia levels and other undesirables, but it only to be used in an emergency. It is a bad idea to resort to chemicals when the natural process of a tank is how it is supposed to be. Be patient and let the live rock do its business.

-Doc
 
Tip: My charcoal filter removes a lot of white slime from my tank but be careful when removing it. My charcoal filter removes so much that when I pull it out the slime literally slides off going back into the tank creating an ugly slime slick. Now, I pull it up and immediately put a bowl under it.
Carbon has a huge amount of pore space which is supposed to be what is being filled with chemicals and such for removal. The white slime you are talking about is dissolved organic compounds which are basically straight nutrients for algae. They accumalate on the carbon when the carbon is used for too long without changing. That is the same thing that happens to bio balls and other mechanical filtration media that becomes a biological filter media because it has not been changed out often enough. That is one of the reasons that carbon should be changed every few days or at most every week, not monthly. Some people keep a tank low enough in nutrients that this does not become a major problem and they can use carbon for longer between changes, however this is not generally the case. In general those people are using the carbon to maintain clarity (lack of color) in their tank, and not as a measure to attempt to control nutrients.
 
You should definitely start saving up for a skimmer. And I mean SAVING. A skimmer for a 240 (which is what I have) is EX-FREAKING-SPENSIVE. I have an Octopus skimmer running on mine, and it cost $600. Lights are a monstrous expense for a tank that size too.

Running carbon should definitely help with the smell too. I suspect that person told you that corals hate it because it takes out nutrients. Well, you can replenish those nutrients by doing regular water changes or adding additives. The smell should only be temporary though, and running carbon until it's under control won't hurt.
 
Carbon does remove some good things from the water (IE trace elements and organic compounds normally consumed by corals) but the advantages of carbon still out weigh the little bit of bad that comes with it. However, the use of small amounts with frequently changes is still a more widely acceptable, more widely recommended, and safer method of use than large amounts changed infrequently. The nutrient removal I feel is better done in other manners is the removal of dissolved organic compounds normally removed by skimmers, denitrification (by live rock and deep sand beds), and water changes. I do not recomend that carbon not be used, just changed frequently and used in small quantities. For a 240 gallon I would only use around a 1/2 cup to a cup at a time and change it weekly.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top