supplement and carbon together?

[i love picotopes]

i just bought 'kent marine's essential elements to dose my tank .i also bought aquapharm black gold (high efficiency carbon)will the carbon absorb the supplement?

[AZDesertRat]

You are going to get a lot of good answers here you are not going to want to hear.

Why are you supplementing? Do you have test kits for each and every substance in that bottle of "essential elements", use them on a regular basis, know you have a demand for everything in that bottle and know for a fact it is needed?

 

Most of us will recommend you do not supplement anything unless you are testing for it, know there is a demand and add just the things that are deficient and nothing else. That is almost always calcium, alkalinity and magnesium, period, nothing else. No iodine, no strontium, nothing else and those bottle os stuff always have other things in them that can get overdosed and you are not testing for it so can get a system out of whack in a hurry.

 

Take the bottle back to the LFS, monitor your calcium, alkalinity and magnesium with good test kits like Salifert or Elos and dose only those three if the testing shows they are needed. You can buy bulk mixes for all three very reasonable at places like Bulk Reef Supply and save yourself some future headaches.

 

I know you don't want to hear this but I am confident it will get repeated over and over before this thread runs its course.

 

Stick with regular water changes with a good salt mix and I'll bet everything short of the three things I mentioned will stay in the proper balance without any additions or supplements.

[lizardfish]

+1 on what he said, but i do think dosing that to your water change water just to get the levels higher than whats in the salt (some salt mixes dont have optimal levels in them but the high quality salts should) you will see a improvement.

 

but all that aside, that wasnt your question!! your question was : Does carbon remove trace elements ??? (wether u dose or not) can anyone answer that im wondering the same.

[AZDesertRat]

Carbon does remove or reduce some trace elements but not enough to cause concern if you keep up with regular water changes with a reputable name brand salt mix intended for reef use.