so i ran a test

So as some of you already know i am a very scientific kinda man. I have been for since my fish keeping start loved charcoal or to some of you cracole. I also been a believer that if you just rinse it off enough and mash it together that it will reactivate so this is my study i did over a long period of time. (like 3 months) And the results i like allot so i bought a tub of charcoal a while back and got media bags and filled them up and threw them in my penguin 350. and cleared up water and what not great. Now people always say it goes bad after about 2 weeks, well i wasn't about to just throw away the bags of charcoal so i just rinsed them well got the mud off them and rubbed the bag together and it seemed some thing happened. Black stuff came out like when you first rinse if off so i was like hmm this should be fine so i put them back in and the next week did the same thing now its been going on for 3 months same stuff, and i skipped out on water changes now for about 3 weeks and did one today and tested my nitrite and it was zero. Now yes i have a second filter for BIO which did help but the fact with 3 month old charcoal in the filter nitrites were still zero? i cant believe people haven't tried this before saving me allot of money and i hope i can help you save money to.

Derek, that's cool that you are interested enough to do a little experimenting.

I haven't used charcoal in so many years and don't have any problems with nitrites. Unless something happens to your bio-media, in an established tank you shouldn't be having problems with nitrite. Do you mean nitrates?

holy cracole!

D, you been drinkin the tank water again?

lol i think it is trate but its the one you want zero and im not saying swhich to charcole just saying a good rinseing can go a long way why replace it when its already goood

NitrAtes at 0 sounds cool but I've never heard of it not being there in some concentration. If it's NitrItes then your bio-filters are doing their job just as Betty said.

I too have never used cracole. Once they've absorbed all they can you pretty much have to throw it away and imo it's a waste of money to be using it all the time. I keep some on hand for emergency just in case something bad falls in the tank and I have to do a major water change. I feel better running some charcoal for a while after everything else has been cleaned up.

yea idk what it is but my charcole its working fine and its old as hell i just lkei said rub it hard core till black starts to show again when i rinse it and then boom ges the dynomight it works again

Drake-tripod wrote:yea idk what it is but my charcole its working fine and its old as hell i just lkei said rub it hard core till black starts to show again when i rinse it and then boom ges the dynomight it works again

How do you know it's actually working? What is it doing for the tank precisely?

Also try rubbing some unused cracole. I bet you get the same black stuff.