Will carbon get rid of the rotten egg smell?

Sir

Sir

Please, can I have some more?
Nov 21, 2007
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i haven't had this problem in a while, but my canister filter has been broken for some time and i have been relying on a hob filter to clean the water. but i finally got my canister filter fixed today (rena xp3) and after a couple minutes of it filtering, a rotten egg smell started becoming quite pungent (i'm assuming that the water that was in it got bad) but i've already done 2 50% water changes in 2 days and don't want to kill all my fish by doing another water change, so i loaded the hob filter with a lot of ammo-carb. will that get rid of the smell or do i have to keep doing water changes and clean out my canister filter again?
 
msjinkzd said:
yes good quality carbon should help.
Click to expand...
how long before it starts working? the hob is for a 55 gal tank and my tank is a 75 gal, but it has loads of carbon in it so it should get rid of the smell fairly quickly correct?
 
If the filter can't keep up with the ammonia it's going to continue to sink (and hurt the fish).

Rather than loading up on a bunch of carbon it might be cheaper to chuck a couple sponge filters in that are seeded from another tank.


Edit: Nevermind. TL;DR

Give it a day or two and rinse some other filters in the tank and i'lll be ok.
 
Let's see if I got this right. After a few months of being off but wet you turned back on the Rena. Did you clean out the Rena when you fixed it?

The rotten egg smell is from Hydrogen sulfide gas (H2S). This is a waste product from anaerobic bacteria metabolisms. This is actually dangerous if the concentrations are high enough.

The solution is water changes, increased circulation, addition of an airstone, and CLEANING OUT THE FILTER.

With all of these steps it should clear out in a few hours.
 
anytime a filter goes more then 12 hrs without working it is best to dump all media to avoid the formation of H2S (which is deadly).
Water changes are the best bet, imho
 
Ya, I wasn't thinking. Quite honestly, I don't know how the rena got fixed, I just turned it on and it was working suddenly. I didn't clean it out because I didn't do anything to fix it. I probably should have turned it off right away. The smell has lessened, but is still somewhat there when I smell the water. I will do another water change and clean the filter this weekend. Oh! And the water cleared up! It was cloudy, but is almost crystal clear now.
 
Water changes wont harm your fish. Hydrogen sulphide will, so it's your choice.

Activated carbon may help, but i'm not sure it it's one of the chemicals it absorbs.

Just keep changing the water, I've done 90% changes when moving tanks, guess what, no fish died.

For future reference, if a filter stops for any reason, open it up and take the media out. You can put this in a nylon mesh bag or similar and drop it back in the tank. Then it will still get some fresh water and oxygen, and some of the cycle bacteria will stay alive. Then when you fix the filter or get a new one you will still have some usefull media to put back in, rather than the toxic waste you got.

Ian
 
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