no carbon filter?

[memphistriathlete]

Ok, I have been digging around this site and I cant find any real information on this except in the beginning discus form "Keeping Discus for Beginners Ardan Huck March 14, 2002" in which he says " Don't use carbon in the filter (this can lead to disease in discus)."
Is this old information or is this still viable. I cant imagine a carbon filter causing disease. Other things I google say it causes hole in head but the again, other sites say this is hogwash.
The internet can be a problem sometimes because you get so much conflicting information. However, I trust the people on this site so I thought I would ask here. Surely, this has come up before.

[pcsb23]

I'm sure if you were to search a bit longer on here you will find plenty of heated debate over this. And you will also find plenty of myth busting too!

Does carbon cause disease be it HITH or anything else? Tricky one, in soft water that is already low on trace elements it is possible for the carbon to remove these trace elements. Carbon is an indiscriminate adsorber, i.e it doesn't care what it adsorbs it just does! Now if we didn't replensih these trace elements by frequent water changes then the discus will ultimately suffer. But if we didn't have carbon in there the trace elements would still get used by the fish and we would still be in the same fix, it would just take a little longer is all. Lack of minerals is thought to contrbute to HITH.

With the amount of water changes most discus keepers do, carbon becomes an unecessary luxury. It is useful to remove meds (though water changes do that too). It can also be useful in emergencies when we cannot do a w/c and there may be a pollutant in the tank.

Short answer is we don't use carbon because we change lots of water on a regular basis.

[memphistriathlete]

Thank you. That was a very well put together answer and makes a lot of sense. I appreciate your response.

[Don Trinko]

Carbon is ok but... after a short time it becomes saturated and no longer removes anything from the water. Don T.

[cyang]

In fact, carbon left in for too long can actually release some of what it has absorbed...so combined with lots of water changes there is really no everyday use of carbon for discus tanks. I don't even use carbon in my non-discus tanks unless I am dealing with meds or need to go a couple days w/o a WC. Then I will leave carbon in for 1 day max.

[Graham]

In fact, carbon left in for too long can actually release some of what it has absorbed...so combined with lots of water changes there is really no everyday use of carbon for discus tanks. I don't even use carbon in my non-discus tanks unless I am dealing with meds or need to go a couple days w/o a WC. Then I will leave carbon in for 1 day max.


The old myth..............Activated Carbon does not, can not and will not release anything back into the water. When an element binds with AC, it's chemically bound and it's there untill extreme heat or acids are used to re-activate it .

An element may react with it such as chlorine and be destroyed, If it's absorbed by it such as a med would be it's there for ever. Needless to say if it acts as a mechanical filter then that particulate can be dislodged when the AC it removed. Other than that it just becomes exhusted and stops working as Don mentioned

G

[MostlyDiscus]

Graham, or Don,


Does carbon effect the slime coat of parents? Ed

[Graham]

Hi Ed, If it changed the water chemistry sufficiently then it may have an indirect affect on mucus production on the fish. It removes or neutralizes an element from the water and holds onto it. There would be no direct affect that I can think of.

G