Re: [RML] stored, used charcoal
Gary Lange (gwlange at stlnet.com)
Fri, 24 Oct 1997 23:14:16 -0500
Dr. Gratzek (spelling may be a tad off) here in US teaches a fish disease
course to hobbyists and dealers every year. He has stated several times in
various lectures that I've heard that even dried sponge filters contain lots of
residual bacteria that very quickly repopulate the entire sponge in very short
order. Keeping the charcoal in the fridge to preserve the bacteria is a bit
like using a cannon to kill a fly :-) Di' Ya must be from the same school that
believes that other old wive's tale about only washing your sponges off in tap
water only. All I can say is do the experiment, wash them off in tap water,
then measure the ammonia levels. They change not a single bit.
Just take 10-30% of the water from the old tank along with some dirt from the
gravel or from washing the filter, and you have an instant biological filter.
I've been setting tanks up like that for years and haven't had a single
incident yet.
Gary Lange
gwlange at STLNET.com
Rainbowfish Study Group of North America
http://home.stlnet.com/~gwlange/rainbowfish.index.html
----------
> From: Bruce Hansen <bhansen at ozemail.com.au>
> To: rainbowfish at pcug.org.au
> Subject: Re: [RML] stored, used charcoal
> Date: Friday, October 24, 1997 4:56 PM
>
> Dianne,
>
> I haven't seen any publishes figures on this but if you use the analogy of
> food, most organic material seems to deteriorate significantly by the 2-3
> week mark depending on the individual item's original freshness. So if you
> wish to keep the filter longer than that I'd suggest using the freezer.
> Many vaccines are freeze dried and Oral Polio Vacine is a frozen liquid
> live vaccine. The commercial filter jumpstart products are prepared in a
> similar way (I think).
>
> Regards,
> Bruce.
> bhansen at ozemail.com.au
>
>