I wanted to know if I have to remove the carbon from my filter before adding this product called Cichlid-Gro which contains trace elements and promotes colors and vitality and Cycle, which is supposed to rapidly mature my biological filtration by introducing live bacteria into the aquarium. I recently treated my tank for ick, and am in the proccess of removing it from the water thru carbon filteration. Will the carbon remove the trace elements and the cycle bacteria from the water? Or can i leave it in there while i add these products? Any help would be greatly appreciated! By the way I have a 60 gal. with 4 african cichlids, 1 salvini, 1 red empress, and 1 convict. They seem to be all doing fine, but I just wanted to be on the safe side, cause i don't want to lose any fish. I just recently tested the water and the nitrite is pretty high, about .03 ppm, total amonia was 2.4 %, pH about 7.6 I figured the nitrite went up because all the nitrifying bacteria was killed off by the ick medication.