water help

[newguy]

I have extremely hard water with a High Ph I would like to lower this. I have read that using peat moss will help. is this true? if so where do you get it? I am also going to do a 75% reverse osmosis water change once the bacteria develope good in my tank. does this sound like a good Idea to lower the Ph and hardness? any help would be greatly appreciated. thanks

 

[natedawg124]

R/O water is the best way to lower your ph and hardness in my opinion. It lowers the hardness propotionatly. So if you have 10 gallons of water with hardness 10 dkh and replace 5 gallons of it with R/O water you get 5 dkh water as a result. Also make sure you check your carbonate hardness levels because R/O water has no hardness thus no buffering capacity making it liable to ph swings. I have tried the peat moss method but only putting it in my filter cartridges and had no luck. I have heard people have success with soaking a large amount of peat in a nylon legging in a large container of water. But I live in an apartment and have nowhere to put a large garabage can for water making purposes. At least my girlfriend says we don't.

 

[fishgeek]

peat works a bit like a deioniser and will help soften the water

ordinary garden peat, i use irish , i have heard canadian propoted alot works quite well
run a search on this site there is a lot of info in the archives

i used to make small volumes in a coffee plunger , boiling water seemed to get a quicker response than cold , now just hang in aquarium in net or scatter on floor of aquarium

andrew

 

[farm41]

Yep, do the search, there is a lot of info on different methods using peat.

 

[aspen]

ime, if your water is very hard, you will likely have to cut it with r/o before attempting to lower the ph with peat. soft water is much more affected than hard. what parms is your tapwater at now? you can keep some dwarfs at higher gh and kh values, but for breeding you will want to lower the hardness ime.

as for type of peat, there are apparently many. some gives you more info on the bags than others. i am in canada and use canadian sphagnum peat moss. apparently this stuff is quite good, although i've never tried the irish stuff or any others. make sure it says 'pure' peat moss, not a peat mixed with soil or fertilisers.

rick