# hard water and peat...



## st.john (4 Jan 2017)

I have pretty hard water (bore hole - not mains) and was wondering what a wedge of peat would do in the filter system? thoughts anyone..?


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## roadmaster (5 Jan 2017)

Could place some peat in bucket of source water used for water changes and measure pH,GH, after 24 hours,.48 hour's, and have your answer.
Depending on KH, It may do little,or a lot, so some experimenting outside the aquarium is needed.
What do you consider "Pretty hard" for what type of fishes,invert's ?
Other than wild caught fishes,most are fairly adaptable or at least those your local fish store is selling.
Assuming (always a bad thing) they are using same water you are for their system's.


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## Costa (5 Jan 2017)

I use organic peat from nurseries. I moist it and cook it in the oven for 1hr at 200'C, and then let it out to dry for a day. I then put it in a zip bag with very fine mesh and place it in the filter or sump.

I use approximately 1gr of peat per liter (which roughly corresponds to 2.5ml of store-bought peat, in granules). The amount you use is dependant on how much you want to drop your water hardness, and how fast.

The problem with peat is that it's very active in the beginning (so, big decrease in GH, KH and pH) but it's activity slowly deteriorates. After about 4 weeks it needs changing.

To avoid big spikes in pH drop (which is dangerous for the fish) I stick to the above mentioned peat:water volume ratio, and separate the peat in smaller socks, which I sequentially change every 3 weeks. One trick might be to use colored stockings so on week 3 you change the blue, week 4 the red and week 5 the black one, week 6 the blue, week 7 the red and so forth.

For your reference my tap water is pH 7.5, GH 14, KH 10. With peat the pH is now 6-6.5, GH 9, KH 2 (measured with sera and API kits).

Hope this helps, looking forward to reading what other people use.


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## Tim Harrison (5 Jan 2017)

I suppose it depends on how hard your water is. IME, with very hard water, filtering through peat probably won't make very much difference...except it'll give your water varying tints of tea depending how much you use - which incidentally I quite like.

Put simply, the carbonates that make your water hard will buffer acids to a great extent, soaking them up rather like an invisible sponge.

However, used in conjunction with Gucci soil like ADA Amazonia may help - one of their usual USPs is lowering pH.
CO2 will also have an effect; aqueous CO2 reacts with water to form carbonic acid.


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## zozo (5 Jan 2017)

I guess when it comes to testing one can only go with what the tap provides and which peat you use.. In my case my tap provides me with +/- pH 7.4, kH 8.. Not realy a drastic value for turning to the use of peat. But i just was curious what it would do. Tested 100 gram JBL TorMec peat pellets on 100 litres of water. Since JBL states on the package 600 grams on 200 litre will reduce kH with 5 to 7°.. In my sum i didn't want a 5-7° drop so thought with 100 grams it should at least lower the kH with 1-2°

And still after 7 days it did absolutely nothing to any of the parameters. Only thing it did was staining the water into a dark tea color. I don't mind a bit stained water, i have it already from the wood and alder cones + leaves i put in, but this was a scary dark color i didn't realy like and wondered what color it would end up with if i've tripled the dose to 300 grams.

Since my regular maintenance contains 1/3 water change every 7 days anyway. So even if it worked / lowered the parameters within 7 days i would have upped it again with my water change.. Doesn't make much sence does it?.. Quite a hassle to prepare the water with peat before it is equal to what is in the tank before it is changed..  

Tho i did read some reports here at ukaps where significan't changes where reported, only noticable difference was they have much harder water than i have. But regardings Tim's post above, that should probably also not make the difference. So it realy beats me what the water contents may be, why it doesn't do anything in mine while it seems to work for others. That's what puzzles me..


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## st.john (17 Jan 2017)

thanks for the replies. buy hard water i mean that the kh levels are super high - the test srips that i use are off the chart (indigo for  kh). I have free water as it's borehole/spring fed (i live in a country estate property).


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## ian_m (18 Jan 2017)

Lowering water hardness with peat can work, but if your water is very hard (as is mine), basically it makes b*gger all difference to hardness and makes your tank look like a very weak cup of black tea. Use Purigen to remove the tea colour.

Why do you want to lower your hardness ?


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## st.john (20 Jan 2017)

ian_m said:


> Lowering water hardness with peat can work, but if your water is very hard (as is mine), basically it makes b*gger all difference to hardness and makes your tank look like a very weak cup of black tea. Use Purigen to remove the tea colour.
> 
> Why do you want to lower your hardness ?


Thanks mate! Essentially to make Co2 dosing more effective. I am not overly concerned to be honest as the payoff of hard water appears to be more stable water chemistry.. however I expect It will lead to a more limited choice of plants in  the large tank I am setting up. S'all good!


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## three-fingers (20 Jan 2017)

Softening your water will not make CO2 dosing more effective.  

Hard water doesn't really limit what plants you can have, more often the opposite is true. Most plants would do better in hard water than soft water due to the extra minerals.  I have soft water and have to add minerals to harden my water to grow healthy _Vallisneria_ for example. 

You would be best just leaving your water hardness as it is, adding peat complicates things with no benefit, unless you want/need brown water from tannins?


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## Tim Harrison (20 Jan 2017)

Vallis is a good plant for hard water it's capable of synthesising carbon from bicarbonate, Anubias nana is another. They always do well in my low-energy tanks...I've always lived in areas where the water is super hard.


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## st.john (22 Jan 2017)

Thanks guys!


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## zozo (22 Jan 2017)

cryptocoryne aponogetifolia also seems to love (require) harder water..  I'm growing it (rather say it's barely growing) in relatively medium to soft water.
There are more crypts originating from the same calcareous Phillipine araes. The website bellow gives a bit insight into that. 
https://crypts.home.xs4all.nl/Cryptocoryne/Gallery/apo/apo.html


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