# Peat Filtration



## apc789 (Jan 7, 2010)

Hi all. Here in Edmonton we have really hard/alkaline water. Unfortunately the most fish that are most desirable to me are all south american softwater fish(apistos, corys, tetras, angels, discus). Not to mention I have a open top aquarium and I get quite a bit of evaporation so every top up my water hardness is ever slightly increasing. 
I was wondering if anyone had any experience with using peat moss in their filtration for softening and acidifying. I cannot afford a r/o unit for mixing my water at the moment and some beautiful apistos just arrived into one of our local fish stores..... strangely they aren't commonly available here. To my knowledge peat filtration is the only other way to "naturally" achieve this. I do not wanna use pH up's or downs or gk/kh buffers and whatnot.

I want to make an attempt at this method of softening my water, but I have some questions. How much do I need to use, how often do I change it, and how will i keep the softness/acidity levels from taking major swings? Or do I even need to change out the peat over time?

Any and all help would be much appreciated by me and a few lucky fish. 

Oh yes if it helps at all I will list my city tap water and tank water params.

Tap water:
pH >7.6 (this is the highest my test kit reads up to)
KH 7 dkh or 125 ppm
GH 9 dkh or 161 ppm

Tank water:
pH >7.6
KH 10 dkh or 179 ppm
GH 12 dkh or 214 ppm


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## Bert H (Mar 2, 2004)

Why is the hardness of your tank water higher than your tap? It appears your substrate or your hardscape is leaching something. Do you have any limestone rocks or are you using Eco on a new set up?

To me, kh of 7 and gh of 9 are not that high. My tap (and tanks) are kh 10 and gh12, same as your measurements. I also cannot afford an RO unit. I can grow lots of plants. I have also kept cories and cardinals without issues, can't speak for the others. Using pressurized CO2, my pH comes down to around 7.0 in the tank.


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## apc789 (Jan 7, 2010)

I do not have any limestone or rocks. I am using Eco Complete. The tank has been running for 3 months. Half of the eco complete was used in a setup for over 6 months.

The reason my tank water is harder then the tap water is because I have A LOT of evaporation because my aquarium is 'topless'. Every day close to 1g of water evaporates, removing the h20, but leaving behind the mineral/carbon content in the water. The carbonate hardness doesn't evaporate with the water, it stays in the tank. So when I top up I am adding more water with more mineral/carbon.


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## aquabillpers (Apr 13, 2006)

The fish that you mentioned will do fine in the moderately hard water that you have. Most if not all of them are many generations removed from the Amazon.

I've bred Angelfish and raised the young in water that is harder than you have. 

If you should need to use softer water for breeding, you could buy distilled water at your food store for about a dollar a gallon and mix it with tap water to get the hardness to the desired level. Or, you could go to a local pond to stream and collect softer water from it. I do that sometimes.

Good luck!

Bill


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## Philosophos (Mar 1, 2009)

Spawning is huge if you want your apistos at full color, and their behavior is far more interesting.

Peat stains the water quite badly, and putting some in your filter usually isn't enough unless you've got a very big filter. A lot of people do peat substrates instead. If that works for you, then run with it. If you don't want heavy staining, read on.

To be honest, using peat because it's natural isn't a great reason to do it. There's nothing intrinsic to something from nature that makes it inherently better or worse. Use it on the criteria of whether it does the job you want.

Peat is cheap and effective, but also ugly. There's also no such thing as the best of all 3 at once as far as I know. Since you probably don't want anything ineffective, the only trade off is paying more for something that doesn't stain.

If you're willing to pay top dollar (probably $400 to rig it), you can probably rig a peristaltic pump to a pH controller to dose any number of acids.

If you don't mind paying less at $40 a bag to have aquasoil shipped to you, then that would be a cheaper alternative for the short-term. You'll get a year of pH reduction, as well as the perfect plant substrate. If your tank(s) requiring soft water need more than 4-5 bags of aquasoil, an RO system may be cheaper to maintain.

Some people use micron filters to polish their water. These are commonly 50 and 100 nm. These filters will not remove the tannic and humic acid, but will remove all kinds of brown little peat particles in your column. Tannic and humic acid will stain things brown, but I'm not sure if the quantity needed to alter your pH will leave enough in the column to be significantly observable. These run about $5 each if i recall correctly, and need to be replaced monthly.


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## Diana K (Dec 20, 2007)

Apistos will thrive in water with almost no minerals in it, very low total dissolved solids. When we measure GH and KH we are not measuring all the things in the water. A reverse osmosis filter removes all these things. For soft water fish that need this sort of water, RO is the best way to make it. Other ways of removing the minerals are available, but they may not really be cheaper. 

The best way to create soft water is to remove the minerals that are making it hard. Fish that like this sort of water also want very low TDS. Adding acids to hard water is not lowering the TDS. Do not chase pH. Work on the GH and KH. 
I would pretreat the water to make it as soft as possible, THEN use the peat to make a black water tank. 
Other than RO, there are filter inserts that you can get. You will have to do some research to find out if they are reuseable, and how to regenerate them. Otherwise you will use so many you might as well pay for an RO unit. 

Peat moss works well on water that is almost where you want it, but just needs a little bit of help to finish it off. I have some in the filters of several tanks, and I use it to prepare the water for water changes. My tap water is already fairly soft, and the peat moss is enough to do what I want. I use a few tablespoons in smaller tank, a cup or so in larger tanks. I use a knee-hi nylon stocking of peat moss to prep the water for water changes. It lasts for quite a few water changes. 

Have you looked into buying RO or Distilled water at a grocery store or elsewhere? Especially for topping off. If this is too expensive, then put a top on your tank. 

Keep researching ways to get soft water, and add up the costs. 

Rain Water: Do you have year round rain? Is the roof clean enough that water from the roof will work? If you have seasonal rain, then count on the rain for part of the year, and figure the cost of other water in the dry season. 

Buy RO or Distilled water by the gallon. Try grocery stores and fish stores. I would get a TDS meter and make sure the water you are getting is really RO. 

Buy other filter options: Check with your water company about all the things in the water. Research filter media that will remove these things. 
Set up a canister filter on a garbage can of tap water. Add to the filter all the filter media that you have researched that may soften the water. You might have several sorts of media in there. Some of these might be reusable, if you soak them in something (usually salt water) then rinse. Make sure you include the cost of regenerating. 

Price RO units, and find out if there is a cost effective unit to provide the amount of water you need. There are some units that do not need to be plumbed into the pipes. 

Research alternate methods of distilling water. For example, in the dry season you could use a solar still to get reasonable pure water. It would cost you the material to make it, and the time, but it is free from then on, just add water and sun.


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## mikaila31 (Feb 24, 2006)

For those of you that use peat, what brands are you using and where are you getting them from?


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## apc789 (Jan 7, 2010)

Thanks for the replies guys! I am starting to think that maybe the best route would be to buy r/o water for top up's for the mean time and eventually purchase a r/o unit for mix's.

I did some tests on a 50/50 r/o tapwater mix and the results were:
pH >7.6
KH 4dkh or 71 ppm
GH 6dkh or 107 ppm

These parameters seem quite a bit more favorable for most of the fish I would like to keep. Not only do I want to keep them but I would love to experience the breeding apisto's and I'm not too sure how successful that will be with my current parameters. I am still wondering why my water is still very alkaline even with the r/o mix. I guess that is where the peat would come into play to pretreat water for water changes.


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## WhiteDevil (May 7, 2009)

I use fluvals peat pellets mostly but have a 50# bag of organic peat in my shed ready for use, I use a filter just for that, mines a HOT250 but you can use any filter, take the guts out put the peatbag in.



tigerbarb
your Ph is ok, your KH is awesome, your GH is a little high, keep mixing till the GH is between 1-3 and Kh 3-6. That seems to be the best mix for RODI/Tap, I mix mine in a 45g holding tank, 5g of tap 40g of RO/DI, when my water comes out

its 7.0 Ph
2 drops on GH and 5 drops on Kh.

thats doing the mix I noted above. It took me about 15 minutes to figure it out and get it in order.


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## Philosophos (Mar 1, 2009)

Why worry about the GH that doesn't consist of carbonates? I've never seen a reason to outside of spawning very sensitive fish as a matter of relation to TDS. That being said, the more common apistos are spawning for me in 12+ GH just fine and hatching right out.


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## apc789 (Jan 7, 2010)

I am not an expert on water chemistry but I do know that I have read apistos are from and prefer soft acidic water and mine is exactly opposite of that.


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## Philosophos (Mar 1, 2009)

They most definitely do, but the range depends on the species. More than pH, they care about TDS, but pH correlates with TDS via carbonates. Some, like A. Cacatuoides really aren't that picky; you can spawn them out in harder water so long as it's clean. If your water is too hard, you can always buy some RO for a water change to induce spawning, hatch the fry, and move them to a grow-out tank.

Other apistos (elizabethae comes to mind) aren't going to spawn for you with egg viability in ranges that you'd want to keep in plants.


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## apc789 (Jan 7, 2010)

How about aggassizi or hongsloi? Those are the only 2 that are available around here right now.... and surprisingly they aren't commonly available here.


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## Philosophos (Mar 1, 2009)

I've got some hongsloi that spawn almost unendingly in a 28 gal bowfront with ADA AS and a pH of around neutral (because of the AS) when the CO2 is off with otherwise nasty tap water. At worst you'd need an RO blend for them, and peat in the filter might offer a little extra drop if egg viability seems low. They're miserable parents, but they seem to spawn more eagerly than A. cacatuoides. I'd separate the fry as soon as you can; I've seen mothers consistently chow down on their fry after 6+ spawns. Maybe someone else can give a different experience there.

Agassizi's are a little more demanding. They'll definitely live in moderately hard water, but spawning is most of the point of apistos IMO. I'd reserve doing them for when it's either no big deal if they spawn right away, or you can be sure that you can drop down to 6.0-6.5 and pretty low TDS outside of the required GH for a planted tank. I know people have had experiences of them spawning in worse, but it's nice to have your first pair spawn with relative ease. There's enough to caring for apistos without wondering if your water is right.

Speaking of which, the average pair of apistos you'll get out of a pet store are usually a little younger than spawning age. It tends to take 2-4 months before they get on with it, and you'll watch them grow closer. Be sure to read up on the species that you buy; every kind has its own little quirks.


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## chad320 (Mar 30, 2010)

i run peat moss in one filter and carbon in another which takes some of the color and hardness out. never had any problems. pantyhose work well and cheap.


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