Carbon causing lateral line erosion

Activated carbon indicted in inducing head and lateral line erosion — Advanced Aquarist's Online Magazine

 

HLLE and Activated Carbon

Below is a link to a very interesting article in Coral, The Reef & Marine Aquarium Magazine, published yesterday in which Jay F. Hemdal connects some dots between use of activated lignite carbon in marine aquariums and adverse affects to certain fish species susceptible to Head and Lateal Line Erosion (HLLE). Great stuff.

Activated Carbon: HLLE Smoking Gun Found | Coral Magazine

Hat tip to the G man for the highlight.

 

Nice. Just saw a highlight on this myself and posted about it here:
http://www.3reef.com/forums/general-reef-topics/hlle-activated-carbon-110028.html#post1135627

Gonna highlight it on the homepage now.

 

Cool....I didn't know if it had been posted yet, I looked first but didnt see anything

 

Actually I think you beat me! Mine has a summary though which looks better on the homepage!
(when you get something good keep that in mind when posting then send me a pm to highlight)

 

it was a post on their facebook.

whatever works best Matt, You can post however you deem fit. I just knew it needed to be shared.

Thanks for the info on the highlighting

 

It has been suspected for a long time that carbon can be involved in HLLE, but should be taken with a grain of salt. Certainly there should be caution taken when using carbon. Don't use too much, use high quality, rinse well etc... However, I've used carbon for the better part of a decade and strongly believe that the benefits outweigh the risks.

While, carbon may be correlated with HLLE, they have not shown it to be the cause or shown a definitive mechanism for how it is involved. There are likely unknown interactions with other factors. In fact I think it is safe to say that activated carbon alone does not "cause" HLLE. I've never seen HLLE in my tanks in that time, running activated carbon essentially 100% of the time. And most people who run carbon also have not seen HLLE.

Also, the findings were limited to lignite coal-based) carbon so, other carbons are possibly safer. Although, I've mostly used lignite and have never seen HLLE, so, I'm not particularly worried. Carbon IME provides great benefit, I would be more worried about trying to run a reef without it, but certainly if you notice HLLE, you may want to cut back or remove altogether. If you are worried, there are many products which are not lignite based, which may be preferable.

 

Do you have any tangs in your tank?

 

wow...don't buy cheap carbon is the general conclusion i come to from that. i really didn't expect results that were THAT obvious. here isa bump for BRS and thier premium ROX .8 carbon.

 

Combined threads.