Best Chemical Media In Your Experience

[Rafael Dilone]

Well i have only tried activated carbon which was brought with my aquaclear 70. Then i started purchasing Chemi-Pure and have not changed since. I also use Chemi-Pure Elite but the difference from the regular is not so drastic besides the removal of phosphates and silicates. I will receive a 3 pack of chemi-pure soon that i got free so guess i will be using the regular one for a while. I just want to see everyone's opinion on the subject matter for my future purchases.

 

[nmonks]

You do need to understand what chemical media are for. In most freshwater systems, most of the time, chemical media are pointless. They're useful for retailers and manufacturers I suppose, but they deliver no useful benefits to most aquarists.

Carbon for example is for removing organic chemicals from the water that over time reduce pH and turn the water yellow. This made sense back in the 60s and 70s when people avoided water changes (I have older books that recommend 20% per month!) but we don't operate that way. A weekly water change will do as good a job as fresh carbon, and at the same time get rid of excess nitrate as well.

Zeolite is even more useless since it does nothing a biological filter doesn't do. The whole point of zeolite is it can be used in situations where biological filters can't be used, for example low pH tanks (biological filtration doesn't work below pH 6, and is pretty poor below pH 6.5).

Cheers, Neale

Well i have only tried activated carbon which was brought with my aquaclear 70. Then i started purchasing Chemi-Pure and have not changed since. I also use Chemi-Pure Elite but the difference from the regular is not so drastic besides the removal of phosphates and silicates. I will receive a 3 pack of chemi-pure soon that i got free so guess i will be using the regular one for a while. I just want to see everyone's opinion on the subject matter for my future purchases.

 

[bitteraspects]

the best chemical media, is no chemical media.
it is absolutely not necessary for daily filter operation, and can cause more harm than good.
the only time you should ever use chemical media is if you are using carbon to remove chemical medications.

problem - chemical medications- carbon

no carbon - no need for chemical medications - no problem

best chemical media = no chemical media.

 

[OldMan47]

I feel much the same way as BitterApspects about the need for carbon but I don't think I would be implying carbon is causing problems. Carbon is pretty much as inert as gravel after a few days in the high organic content water of an aquarium. It will have removed as much organic matter as it ever will and now just becomes a medium for growing bacteria, it does have a surface after all. The biggest benefit I can see to removing the carbon is that it gives me more room in the filter for other things. My choice of what other thing depends a lot on the needs of a particular tank. If it has a light biological load, maybe more particulate filter would be nice to have. If I have a heavy load in the tank, I will favor more biomedia.

 

[bitteraspects]

many people have linked the use of carbon to HLLE/HITH. also, carbon has the potential to leech phosphates and even toxins into your tank after its finished absorbing what it can for those 5-7 days.

ill go look for the articles when i get home from work

 

[Norvu]

I have always wondered though... regular ceramic rings or those bio balls?

 

[bitteraspects]

it really depends how much space you have.
remember, all bio-media does the exact same thing. provides surface area for beneficial bacteria to grow. so really, it doesnt matter what you use, just that you use enough.

personally, i suggest bio-max pellets or substrat pro for canisters or canister style HOB's (AquaClear)
if youre using a wet/dry or a sump, you could use either ceramic rings or bio-balls. i use plastic pot scrubbers personally. they provide more surface area than bio-balls, and are a ton cheaper.

 

[Mikaila31]

I guess it really comes down to what is classified as "chemical media". Things like zoelite and carbon I would never use and IMO are a waste of money and some can actually be determinant to the tank. Things like runing crushed coral or peat in the filter I am fine with. These are also there to chemically effect the water. I'm not sure if they would classify as chemical media though

 

[bitteraspects]

no. much like driftwood, those are natural PH buffers and not considered chemical media like ammonia chips or activated carbon.

 

[OldMan47]

I can't disagree with the carbon being associated with HITH since I have never seen it in my tanks and have not researched it in any way.

I must disagree with the statement that "carbon has the potential to leech phosphates and even toxins into your tank after its finished absorbing what it can for those 5-7 days." Carbon is an adsorber. It has a finite number of adsorption sites on it and after that it will not adsorb anything more. It will also not release what it has adsorbed except that it does replace the things attached to it with other things that stick to it better. If you started with a phosphate contamination level of say 5 ppm and the carbon managed to removed 2 ppm, it will never get any better than the 3 ppm remaining. None of the phosphate will ever end up back in the water either so you run out of capacity and the chemical just sits there with no further benefit. I am sure we all agree that carbon is quickly exhausted. If you somehow managed to use something else to remove those remaining 3 ppm, the carbon adsorption might achieve a new equilibrium with the water by "releasing" the phosphate into the water and leaving it with say 0.5 ppm. In what way are you worse off than you would have been if you had never used the carbon? You have still received the benefit of removing the 1.5 ppm of phosphate. All of these numbers are purely for illustration, they are all going to be wrong if you took a real world sample and measured the resulting changes. I never said how much carbon or how much water was involved and I do not know the affinity that carbon has for phosphates.

A visual way to look at carbon is to think of it as an empty container when it is fresh. As you pour things into the container it fills up and eventually overflows. At that point it can hold no more. If you continue to add to the container, as much comes out as goes in. You could say that the container doesn't work to hold the original volume because it "releases" the part that overflows. Nothing will hold any imaginable amount of any chemical forever with no exchange with its environment but carbon acts much like that empty container. If you want to be able to remove the amount of another container, you need to replace the full one with an empty one. Change the carbon when it is exhausted and the new carbon will provide whatever benefit the original carbon did.

Just to be clear, I do not routinely use carbon as I find its uses are not things I encounter in my own tanks. I do have a supply in my fish room but it is getting pretty old since I have never opened a container of it yet. I do hate the misinformation that can be found in so many places on the internet though.

 

[Dave Spencer]

I use Zeolite on all my new tanks and rescapes. It does a great job in eliminating the chances of algal blooms when a planted tank is at its most vulnerable, by keeping ammonia out of the water column. I never see brown diatoms either, which many seem to consider an inevitability.

Seachem Purigen is another favourite of mine, which I always put in my filters these days. I use a lot of wood in my scapes, but the Purigen resin gives me crystal clear water. The water being taken out of the tank during a water change can be perceptibly clearer than the tap water going in.

Dave.