aquarium filter ques.
Ok, so I love fish. They were the first "edible" animal I stopped eating. (I was 7? 8? I told everyone I didn't like the way fish tasted. I just didn't like the thought of eating my friends!)
I have a small 5 gallon fish tank that houses 1 beta and 2 apple snails. The beta's name is Opal, and the snails are Appletini and Xeduardo (the x is silent). It's one of those "Eclipse" fish tanks with the filter and light built in. It's very quiet. I love it (shameless plug).
Anyways the point of this thread is I was wondering about the filter for the aquarium. The filter inserts contain "activated charcoal." My extreme, angry vegan radar reacts negatively to the word "charcoal." Anybody know of "activated charcoal"'s origins? I can't find any info to contact the company
(here's a picture of Opal and Appletini in their old fish tank. Xeduardo's actually the bigger snail, but he/she's hiding behind the red rock thing.)
Appletini and Xeduardo (the x is silent).
the x is silent!! I love it!!!!!!!!!!!!
sorry no 'for sure' charcoal info.... but here's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activated_carbon interestingly it didn't mention animal sources in the production section. but who knows...? :-\
It sounds OK here:
http://www.answers.com/topic/activated-carbon
I love the names too!
I hope this helps! : http://www.maisonradical.ca/Nouveau_Dossier/activated_charcoal.htm
I had this same issue before when my "vegan radar" (I love that, haha) picked up on the same charcoal filter for my turtle tank. It was frustrating, because I knew that even if it turned out to be animal-derived, what else could I use? And lord knows those turtles aren't about to clean the tank themselves ::)
I contacted the company and they basically told me they had no way of knowing (even better). Looking back, I should've asked for the number to whoever was the provider of the activated carbon (SOMEONE's bound to know), but didn't.
It seems like "activated carbon" is the term for the product listed on the wikipedia page (which cites nutshells and wood, etc as sources). *but* bone char's got its own lovely page on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bone_char which indicates it's *also* used as an aquarium filter (great). Read lower, and it talks about bone char being used to filter a quarter of U.S. sugars, the rest filtered by... activated carbon.
WHICH IS IN MY AQUARIUM?? agh.