Hi, I'm new to this site, and I'm wondering if anyone out there has any experience using peat moss specifically in order to lower the mineral content in hard water thereby lowering the ph. I like the most naturalistic conditions and look so I'm fine with tannins etc.
Peat moss
- Thread starter Redghost
- Start date
Peat will add tannins and is good to help soften your water. I had a tank years ago I used peat pellets in to do the job. I think they still sell them. Just put them in a canister or hob filter. Super easy.
With the pellets it takes a couple days to really get stained. The pellets are pretty hard so maybe a presoak would help. Water was fairly hard. I had two caecilian worms in a pauldarium of sorts. They tend to live in swamps so soft acidic waters.
The tannic acids in peat slightly reduce pH, and are anti-bacterial, but as far as softening water significantly, other than the acids reacting and neutralizing a little calcium, reducing the strength of other minerals is a bit of a stretch.
I have used peat, and fallen leaves and had slight success with my hardish water (normally @ 250 ppm, alkalinity @100ppm, and normal pH 7.8 or higher,) but the tannins only dropped water a few 10ths in pH, no reduction in the Total Hardness, but reducing buffering capacity from 100, to about 60.
Soft water fish reacted well to the tannins over time, so for those species I soaked lots of leaves in fall, and put peat in filters or mesh under influent pipes, and also added rain water.
I have used peat, and fallen leaves and had slight success with my hardish water (normally @ 250 ppm, alkalinity @100ppm, and normal pH 7.8 or higher,) but the tannins only dropped water a few 10ths in pH, no reduction in the Total Hardness, but reducing buffering capacity from 100, to about 60.
Soft water fish reacted well to the tannins over time, so for those species I soaked lots of leaves in fall, and put peat in filters or mesh under influent pipes, and also added rain water.
