?Old Tank Syndrome?

[Woodstock]

You guys are a hoot~~

[Dakota]

very nice warnberg very true except no kids ever for me that way i can afford this hobbie.

[ScottT1980]

Originally Posted by Woodstock

Good point Scott.... but.... Wouldn't carbon adsorb these 'hidden" element(als)? If that is the case, then those reefers that use carbon intensively, their aquariums would not experience OTS?

Sorry it has taken SOOOOO long to get back to this thread, been busy finishing up a thesis...

I think it is a question of affinity, and chemistry is certainly not my forte. I think carbon is a great, great thing for those of us anal enough to use it. However, as Cougra alluded to, many of us are not and from everything I have read, it get saturated pretty quickly. So, that means that a lot of the time, the substrate would bind more strongly to these impurities than the carbon. I would see this as an incredibly gradual process that even the most anal of us probably could not stop...

But then the question goes back to phosphate. Some aquarists with DSB think that after 5 years, their tank develops OTS. This nullifies the gradual process, ASW impurities hypothesis a bit. Phosphate saturation is highly probable, but again, I would blame this on algae blooms but not neccesarily OTS. So, these short term OTS incidences have to be the result of something us right? I think mojo blames it on biological filter dynamics, but even that is a vague concept (at least to me). So, I don't know, perhaps OTS is too vague a concept and our systems are too complex to really get a definitive answer...

Take er easy
Scott T.