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I am using a emperor 280 filter. I bought it off a friend, so i don't have instructions for it. But it has 2 slots for the filters and one of them is for the "media filter." From the online site it says to only use black diamond activated carbon, white diamond ammonia neutralizing crystals, or diamond blend. But today I got aquatic gardens "activated carbon and zeolite crystals" and put it in the filter. There seems to be little white specs coming out of the filter. Is this right? Or did I do something wrong? thanks

I'm not familiar with that particular filter, but you're probably doing something wrong if you get "bits" coming out of the filter.

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Mats

I think that the issue is the Marineland has a filter cartridge. The carbon is normally prepackaged in a sachel type thing. Did you just pour in the new carbon? It needs to be placed in a filter bag of some sort first.
-Shane

I bought a "media bag" and put the crystals in the bag, and then in the "media cartridge." Everything seems fine now. But It seems that since i got the blend of the black carbon crystals and the white ammonia crystals, that it was only white pieces that were coming out and not the black pieces, althought they were the same size. I hope everything is okay now, thanks for the help.

The second cartridge (closest to tank) is a basket-type cartridge made to be filled with granulated carbon or other chemical filtration. It does not require the use of floss with it as the first (preassembled) cartridge is, although the use of a media bag probably won't hurt. You just need to rinse the cartridge & media really well to get all the small particles out before placing into the filter. Alternatively, try to select media with larger particles, if possible. I just setup this filter last weekend and had the same problem even with the Marineland media and rinsing (not thorough enough). I had both white & black particles coming out of the cartridge. Next time I think I will try pelleted carbon instead.

I bought the black diamond "diamond blend" (what emporoer suggets to use... and took out the aquatic gardens "activated carbon and zeolite crystals" which still leaked bits even in the media bag. With the Diamond blend (Even though the pieces of crystals are smaller) seems to not leak any bits out of the filter. Maybe black diamond is just a superioer product than the "aquatic gardens" brand.

I used the Diamond Blend as well. I think I might have overfilled the cartridge thus causing the two halves to spread apart and leak carbon/zeolite. Since the cartridge was installed and the little bit of initial leakage, I haven't noticed any additional leakage since then.