Terratlantis Replacement Carbon for Tortum TC-500 Filter - 2 Pieces

Terratlantis Replacement Carbon for Tortum TC-500 Filter - 2 Pieces is a pack of two activated carbon cartridges for the Tortum TC-500 internal filter.

Key Features

• Two cartridges in the pack: Which gives you the change and the spare, and carbon needs changing more often than people expect.
• Made for the Tortum TC-500 internal filter: The pump supplied with the larger Tortum turtle tanks.
• What activated carbon is genuinely good at: Taking dissolved organic matter, smells and yellow or brown discolouration out of the water. On a turtle tank that is a visible difference.
• What it does not do: It does not remove ammonia or nitrite. Those are the two things that actually poison an animal, and water changes and biological filtration are what deal with them - see below.

Carbon Does Not Make The Water Safe, And That Is Worth Being Clear About

• Carbon polishes water. It takes out the dissolved organics that make water look yellow and smell stale, and it is good at that.
• Ammonia and nitrite are different chemistry and carbon does not touch them. They come from waste and uneaten food, they build up quickly in a turtle tank, and the only things that deal with them are a cycled biological filter and regular water changes.
• So do not let fresh carbon talk you out of a water change. Clear water and safe water are not the same thing, and a turtle tank can be both clear and dangerous.
• If you want to know where your tank actually stands, a liquid test kit for ammonia and nitrite is the cheapest piece of equipment in this whole category. Ask us.

Two Practical Things About Carbon

• It exhausts. Carbon works by adsorbing onto its surface, and once that surface is full it does nothing at all - it does not release what it has caught, it simply stops working. A few weeks is a realistic working life, which is why this comes in twos.
• It strips medication out of water. If you are treating a turtle with anything added to the water, take the carbon out for the course of treatment and put fresh carbon in afterwards to clear the residue. Leaving it in means dosing the carbon rather than the animal.

Where The TC-500 Comes From, If You Are Not Sure

• The TC-500 is the small internal pump that Terratlantis supplies with the two larger Tortum turtle tanks - the 75 cm and the 104 cm models. If you bought one of those, this is your filter.
• It is not supplied with the two smaller Tortum tanks, so if you have a 40 or a 55 you may be running something else entirely. Tell us what you have and we will check the media fits before you order.

Good To Know

• The foam pre-filter for the same TC-500 is listed separately here. The foam is the part that does the heavy work and the part that carries the biological filter; the carbon is the polish.
• Rinse a new cartridge briefly before fitting it to wash off carbon dust, which otherwise clouds the tank for an hour.
• Ask us if you are not certain which filter you have. A photograph of the pump is enough for us to tell you.