Is it true? Activated Carbon removes essential plant nutrients from the water?

I never have seen any noted issues with dosing and using carbon, neither has Amano. So it does remove things, mostly organics, but I've not seen any evidence that using it is anyway detrimental to a planted tanks.

It really does not last long as a chemical remover, maybe 1-2 months or so.

Regards,
Tom Barr
 
Glad you stopped by and replied Tom! I agree 100%. I use top grade activated charcoal in all of my low tech planted tanks and dose ferts very infrequently without issue. I only change the activated carbon once in a blue moon. Once it is incapable of adsorbing any more organic pollutants, it does act as more biological filter media. The proof of no harm to plants and fish is in the tanks.
 
I dont run carbon in any of my tanks simply because I dont think its needed...
Unless you are removing meds, it is really unnecessary, and like tom said, it is only good for about a month or so anyway..
 
Some use it to remove long term tannins from driftwood in planted tanks or for shorter term things like new tank start ups, and then some add it for ADA As which leaches a lot of tannins as well. I use it for removing color/tannins and that's about all.

Regards,
Tom Barr
 
Oh, BTW, acrivated carbon is what is used to remove the allelopathic chemicals in all the control studies on the topic for plant biology(plant- plant, or for us, as some have claimed, algae=plant internactions).

So if you buy into allelopathy, using activated carbon should induce algae if alleopathy is causing any effect on aquatic plants releasing alleopathic chemicals.

Yet..........we sure do not see it.

Simple easy test any planted aquarist can do to falsify the entire hypothesis and move on to real issue with algae and plant growth:thm:

Instead folks speculate, not test. You can figure out a lot more and resolve many things without getting lost in all that monkey business.

And activated carbon can help give you a control to test against for organics.

Regards,
Tom Barr
 
plantbrain said:
Simple easy test any planted aquarist can do to falsify the entire hypothesis and move on to real issue with algae and plant growth:thm:

Instead folks speculate, not test. You can figure out a lot more and resolve many things without getting lost in all that monkey business.

And activated carbon can help give you a control to test against for organics.

Regards,
Tom Barr
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sadly less and less people seem to do this. same with will this plant grow in this tank. try it and see. mess around with the light more light less light longer shorter ferts no ferts see how they change for their own tank. this is one of the reasons why i love fish so much there isnt one answer for everything. even with 24 tanks set up they are all different.
 
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