Curious on charcoal / carbon

[2000se]

I was curious - we had a pretty big bonfire the other night and I kept a few larger pieces of straight charcoal. I pulled them from the fire and dropped them into a bucket of water.
Isn't this the same thing as carbon? What would be wrong with using this instead of buying fancy carbon?

 

[MoshJosh]

My basic understanding is the "activated" part of activated carbon is important, and regular charcoal will not have the same filtration effects. . . could be wrong but

EDIT: Here is googles answer

Difference Between Charcoal and Activated Charcoal

What is Charcoal? Charcoal is a carbon residue made from partially burned wood and other organic materials in which the burning took place with limited air supply. History of charcoal production Charcoal has been in

www.differencebetween.net

 

[HuduVudu]

@2000se carbon dust is heavily implicated in HLLE. This seems to me like a recipe for disaster.

 

[2000se]

My basic understanding is the "activated" part of activated carbon is important, and regular charcoal will not have the same filtration effects. . . could be wrong but

EDIT: Here is googles answer

Difference Between Charcoal and Activated Charcoal

What is Charcoal? Charcoal is a carbon residue made from partially burned wood and other organic materials in which the burning took place with limited air supply. History of charcoal production Charcoal has been in

www.differencebetween.net

I saw nothing in that article that leads me to believe that regular charcoal is bad other than the fact that 'activated' charcoal has a much higher surface area for absorbing toxins. Given you could change the carbon (charcoal) more frequently it appears it would be fine.

In fact : This video is was in my head while thinking this through (if you want to skip through - start at ~ 3:30ish)


Now - saying all of this, I am a little hesitant to try this as my tank is running just fine with out carbon. But it did get me thinking of the topic.