On Mon, 20 Oct 2003 01:37:08 GMT, Victor Martinez opined:

animaux wrote:
How do you do that? IN a tank? We have a 150 gallon aquarium and I couldn't
imagine putting peat moss in there! Is this something special? We collect
tetras. My favorites are the black neons.

People who want very soft, acidic water usually put some form of peat
moss in a sump or a canister filter. Some fish, like discus and neon
tetras need those specific conditions to breed.
I'd rather not go through all that trouble and so I keep fish that do ok
in the water that comes out of my tap.

Ah. We don't have canister filtration. We have something that hangs off the
back. It pumps 500 gallons an hour. All the air pumps are in the garage. We
drilled holes in the wall and put the tubes through. Fortunately, the tank was
up against the wall where we could do that. I have not found any air pump which
doesn't make a ton of noise. Now, we hear nothing.

As for fish, we bought fish we were pretty sure wouldn't breed, so we're on the
other end of the spectrum. To use fish which require a low pH is futile. We'd
have to treat the tank constantly to maintain a low level pH. Our water is
about 7.6 - 7.8 and the fish are thriving.

V