# Aquaclear Zeo Carb



## Teibban (Oct 2, 2013)

My friend gave me the Zeo Carb from Aquaclear that he had.

Is it good to use? Also I use Flourish, Potassium and Iron from Seachem, will it remove them?

Thanks


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## mattinmd (Aug 16, 2014)

zeo carb is basically zeolite and activated carbon (aka activated charcoal) mixed together.

I would not generally use either part of this product in a cycled planted tank on a regular basis.

Zeolite removes primarily ammonia. Assuming you have a properly cycled tank you should never have much ammonia, so this isn't generally needed. If you have a small emergency due to an ammonia spike, or need to set up a quarantine tank without cycling it, zeolite might be reasonable short-term measure to control ammonia. In a well cycled tank, all this is going to do is compete with your beneficial bacteria for ammonia, possibly reducing their numbers.

Activated Carbon adsorbs many things from the water, including organic compounds. It could remove some of the nutrients you put in with your fertilizers, although Seachem claims their formulas are designed to be rapidly absorbed by plants to mitigate this. Carbon mostly deals with "funny smells" in the water, and is useful for stripping out medications. Carbon also sometimes leaches phosphorus into the water.

I guess the big question is, do you have any problems that would be addressed by Zeolite or carbon? If not, you might be better off setting it aside until you do.


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## Teibban (Oct 2, 2013)

Actually I have no problems with my water parameters.

I got an amonia spike 2 weeks ago because there was an Amano shrimp dead that I did not see under a decoration. Other than that Amonia and nitrite are at 0 all the time.

I wanted to find something that could fit in an Aquaclear 20 filter to have a little bit clearer water. Was thinking of Purigen but when I put it in an Aquaclear small mesh bag it still went through the holes and I got 100s of balls in the tank and had to syphon it out.

The Purigen Bag is too big to fit. I have the sponge and 2 bags of bio balls in the filter atm.


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## mattinmd (Aug 16, 2014)

I have an AC20 on my 5.5 gallon QT tank... I'm basically running it the same as you are, although I'm using porous stone/ceramic media (mostly Matrix), not bio balls.

And yes, Purigen is really fine stuff. Most bags don't work out well, and the 5" x 10" "The Bag" is really big. 

You could probably make the 100ml Purigen pack fit folded in half (100ml comes pre-packed in a permanently sealed small bag). However, I haven't tried to fit one in the AC20 yet, and suspect that it would probably take up most of your bio-media space.


The AC20 is a really small filter, and it comes with the drawbacks that any small filter has... not enough space for all the media you really want to use... 

In my case, I'm using it on a QT tank... not a big deal..


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