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I am confused. Well that easy for me but made you can help with my confusion.

I have been looking at canister filters but have some confusion about medium. I have read on this forum that charcol is not needed in a filter after the tank has established and about the only time after that its needed is to remove medications. Well I am ok with this so I start looking at other medium which most of it says it filters out ammonia, nitrites, and nitrates. This is what I don't get. The benifical bacteria in the tank uses the ammonia and nitrites to make nitrates. Nitrates are an improtant part of plant growth so why filter them out? I can see if you are having problems with high ammonia levels you might need to but in my tank at present I have 0 ammonia, 0 nitrites, and 10 ppm nitrates which sould be just dandy fine.

So besides the bio medium what do you put in your canister filter and why?

Thanks for the help.

I don't understand why and how you could do without charcol
filteration is needed at three levels
mechanical, chemical and biological
what would be used for chemical filtration when one removes actvated charcol?

If it was my own filter, I would use a lot of biological media and some mechanical filtration as well. The latter traps large particles from the water column, and the biological stuff would bear the brunt of keeping the tank clean. Myself, I don't really believe in chemical filtration. Carbon hasn't been proven to be a useful cleaning aid (except for eliminating medications), and neither have the other chemical-removal products. As long as you keep on top of water changes and care for your tank well, any problems that crop up will be few and far between.

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And when he gets to Heaven, to Saint Peter he will tell: "One more Marine reporting, Sir! I've served my time in Hell."

Makes sense...sort of
will have to do some research.

You would not want to run carbon while using liquid fertilizer for your plants.

I don't run carbon all the time myself. I keep a couple bags around in case of meds usage or emergencies. The efficiency of the carbon drops rapidly after days to a week and after that it really starts to act more like mechincal filtration.