Randy Holmes-Farley
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Hi Randy; I was very interested in Feldmans articles. I respect him as I do you & hope I haven't misrepresented his finding.
The following is what I took from his research.
I certainly do not doubt the experimental result that GAC can drop TOC a lot lower than skimming, and that may well extrapolate to most or all aquaria.
While he and I may not be in perfect agreement on the underlying physical chemistry principles involved in every aspect of his experiments, the primary one I am pointing out in this context (and I do not know if he actually made this conclusion anyway) is that one cannot only analyze skimmate for DOC and properly conclude how much DOC is removed from an aquarium when the skimming process itself is expected (by me, at least) to convert DOC into POC. Yes, if you monitor DOC in the aquarium you can make such conclusions, but not from skimmate analysis.