Running Activated Carbon in Reef aquarium with Algae Scrubber

[bennyss]

Hi,
Many aquarium reef best practices recommend to run activated carbon in reef aquarium in order to absorb the doc causing yellow tint in order to keep the efficiency of the lighting.
This because the yellow tint doc absorbed the blue light.
As we know algae scrubber have many benefits for the corals by providing many organic compounds such amino acids,vitamines, carbohydrates etc.
What is the best practice using carbon?

[SantaMonica]

For a waterfall scrubber, yellow is caused by not cleaning often enough, and the roots loose flow and light, and die and turn into yellow "wheat". If you clean more often, yellow will not happen.

Upflow scrubbers do not have a yellowing problem because the roots are always underwater and do not lose flow.

But if you want to use carbon, you can, it will not affect the scrubber. You will be removing dissolved coral food however, so I'd recommend to not use carbon.