Charcoal / Carbon

[GaryE]

I would be horrified if something removed tannins. I add them.

 

[CarissaT]

@Back in the fold - I bought a bottle of Prime recently, and expect it'll last a very long time. I don't worry about chlorine. I pour from a hose, and most of it gasses of. It has zero effect on the fish in the low concentrations that remain, except for a couple of species. With them, I get no spawning for 4-5 days after a water change. Is it a dislike of fresh water? Could be, but I decided to see if it was that residual chlorine. In my old house, the chlorine was predictable and easy to clear. Here, there are days when the chlorine guys must fall asleep with the chlorine dosing pump on.

I found a syringe to measure the stuff with, and I'm testing it. In my larger tanks, I don't bother. If it makes it easier to breed my couple of sensitive species, then I'll know the chlorine caused problems. The rainbows will lay eggs with fresh water - it stimulates them. I don't worry with them.

If I find it useless, then I can recycle Prime as cologne.

If I start the water and get a face full of chlorine gas, then I use it on all tanks. The dosages are uneven here.

Salt is a problem chemical to me, as it is hard to get out and it does negatively affect my fish. It's an alien substance to my rainforest species here. It affects their breeding, which I see as an indicator of their overall health.

I'll wager that if you're doing water changes your water would smell sweet with carbon too. But carbon is harmless.

Every carbon dechlorination system I've seen pumped the water through lab grade carbon before it ever touched the tanks. It was outside the usual filtration loop.

I don't think it's wrong to be conservative in your fishkeeping ways, but when there's a change for a positive reason, it's worth exploring. Nothing will ever convince me to do a fishless cycle, for example. The chemistry experiment doesn't interest me and I think it's a waste of time and energy unless studying the cycle is the goal. I don't see it as an innovative practice. So I reject it and move on. If I see a thread where people explain it, good for them. Many find it fascinating to work with reagents.

If you salt tanks, that's your approach. The problem comes if you tell others this is what you must do - unless you know why you do things and where they come from, it becomes a ritual and nothing more. You'll end up founding a religion.

The biggest technological advance between when I started keeping fish as a kid 55 years ago and now is the water tap. Once we learned the sink drain and the water tap were key tools in this hobby, the change was spectacular. We could keep all kinds of great species, our tanks didn't smell like swamps, our fish lived longer, we could keep more fish in a tank, plants flourished... kaboom.

What I wish we'd rediscover is between our ears. The oldtimers knew fish were not going to be easily available forever. They tried hard to breed and share out the fish they bought, because they didn't see them pouring in to Petco as a product. They cost too much and supply lines were shaky, and the older generation gardened with their tanks. We buy them like annuals in the Springtime, for them to die in Fall and be bought again, and the whole hobby of breeding and maintaining fish has been withering fast. I'd like to see us get away from the disposable animal approach and not be afraid to get a little serious about the hobby. But that goes beyond salt and carbon.

What do you breed? Maybe I’ll get some fish from you sometime.

 

[Back in the fold]

I'll tell you what @GaryE I won't cram salt down people's throats or insist that I am absolutely right but I'm not going to stop salting my water either. I have my reasons that make sense to me and it works for me. Did you know that the proportions of salt in humans and the oceans are the same ? Salt is essential to life and that is a true fact.
I had a friend who was a very successful fish keeper. This guy could put any two fish together and get fry. He just had the touch. Some guys are like that. He never used dechlorinator. Never. I was over at his house one day and he asked me to haul his buckets because he wrenched his shoulder and I asked him where his dechlor was and he said "I never use that stuff". Frankly , I was kind of taken aback.
I totally agree with you about wasting fish , treating them like annuals to be thrown away at some point. It's a crying shame that people don't try harder to keep fish long term and breed many generations. You yourself once posted that people would learn much about a particular fish by keeping them through several generations and that is also a true fact. I have great grand fry from my humble Aplocheilus lineatus Golden Wonders and I know much more about this particular fish now than when I got the original pair in 2019. Observing four generations of a fish is an experience everyone should have.

 

[Stan510]

Water changes are the standard thing to do in fish aquariums. It's hard to explain that when you have a planted aquarium with fish (light loads) frequent water changes work against you unless you dose all the micro and macro's you took out. So what's the point of making big water changes?
That's my philosophy.
The carbon does remove some of the iron..just have to use more until THAT balance works itself out.
Until you get into plants and are able to go a month or or even two with no water changes,it is hard to believe plants can act as filters too.