Yet another weird idea... Activated Carbon pads

[Robyn]

At WallyWorld, you can buy activated charcoal prefilters for air purifiers and for your home furnace filter or air purifier:
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=870796#ProductDetail

This would basically be a cheap and LARGE copy of a carbon pad like one I would use in an aquarium canister filter.

If I placed disks of this in my skimmer (which is pretty darn powerful) and/or in baskets under my waterfalls... would this help polish my water and remove any colorants? I am not trying to remove chlorine, ammonia, or nitrogen in any form. I have murky water that may very well contain tannins and such (I removed a bunch of decaying leaf matter and pinecones from the upper bio-pond along with a bucket of string algae, both green and dying, when I took over the pond). The water was a rather deep tea color... it is now turning slightly greenish. Not pea soup... but a clear greenish brown color.

There is also quite a bit of particulates (fines?) in my water. I am currently using baskets of quilt batting to remove some of them. I figure that this carbon material would do much the same thing, be a bit easier to rinse the stuff off them, and perhaps the carbon would take the tea color and such out of the water? Due to color as stated above, and these suspended particles... visibility is reduced.

I have used the search feature on here and read what I could find on related topics. I really do NOT want to use any chemicals if in ANY way possible. I HAD considered a Hyd. Peroxide treatment @ 1 qt per 3000 - 4000 gallons.

 

[lfreem]

Do you have a UV light--that's not a chemical. LOL!
Have you tried barley pellets? Also not a chemical and natural.
Carbon is naturally occuring in the earth. You can buy it at any petshop then simply buy one of them mesh bags and just pop it into your filter, skimmer or in a basket. I use it to remove the tea color you describe. They sell black or white carbon, so you should stick with the black since it will be harder to see if you are just popping it into a visible spot. Also, do not put it immediately near plants, and some of them will have a hard time with carbon directly near it.