All Carbon leaches phosphate?

I learned somthing new today. Apparently all Carbon contains phosphate? This is somthiing i read on a product a LFS. and does all carbon leach phosphate.

 

Any reasonably good quality carbon will only leach a minuscule amount. You will get more from feeding for example. So, I don't consider it a significant issue as long as you are buying from a reputable supplier.

 

No, it doesn't. It is from the way it is manufactured. Most top brands don't come from that.

 

Beyond the above statements, most people rinse the fines away before putting it into their system. Quality carbons have very little ash in them and when you rinse away the fines, the little that remains is rinsed away. The poor quality carbons that are high in ash content will still leach very little phosphorus provided you rinse them too.

 

Really? Seaceam states on there sperical carbon specifically. "all carbons contain phosphate, regardless of false claims to the contrary"

 

As I stated, all carbons contain phosphorus. However, when it is fired and the organics are burned off, that leaves ash that contains phosphates. Almost all of this will be removed via a good rinse. If you are concerned about it, you can soak it in RO/DI water and remove the residual P.

 

Carbon has to contain phosphorous as it's manufactured from organic material. The problem is people do a test by putting some carbon in a small amount of water. Maybe 10ml and get a reading of say 0.25, but by the time you put that in a gallon, it's already around .00006, add to 100g, it's .0000006 etc... Most likely over time it will release more than this, and you would be putting more than the small amount you tested, it the 100g tank for example. So, the actual numbers may be higher, but they are still very, very small, most certainly below the detectable limit by a good test kit even. Not something to worry about. Every time you feed your tank, you are adding significantly more.

 

There are so many myths out there about GAC... phosphates, they release everything they catch, blah blah... GAC is not a one size fits all.... many different manufacturing processes, made out of many different original materials, made to many different grades, promoted by many different companies all making their own claims about how great thier apples are compared to the other guys oranges.

Bottom line is the is a mountain range of evidence as to how beneficial GAC is to treating water. The benefits to running it in a reef tank far far out weigh any miniscule drawback.

 

For me, there is no consideration whatsoever as to whether or not to run GAC. I do so 24x7 and can always tell, by looking at my corals when it is becoming exhausted. There is no question about the benefits IMO.