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#1
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How to test peat H2O for GH & KH
Thanks for all of the posts. I built a peat filter per your website.
How do you test your peat water for KH and GH. My test kits (cheap ones) do not show a color change because of the tea water. I do believe that the pH dropped below 6 from a starting 8.3. Also, do you see any bounce back in your pH over time due to the KH being at 3? "Marksfish" wrote in message news:KWJaa.11567$Lq.923778@stones... Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I read somewhere that organic materials like wood or peat lower the pH of the water by leaching mild acids into the water. This will lower the pH , but it doesn't change the gh / kh . If these materials don't absorb minerals , they would actually INCREASE the total dissolved solids ( TDS ) . Again , I may be wrong . If so , please explain why .... Indeed, peat does work by leaching tannins into the water, thus acidifying the water and also depleting the KH content of the water, making it softer. Dependent on the type of peat used (I use Irish moss peat), the pH is dropped from a pH of over 8 to 5.5 and the KH drops from 13 to a respectable 3. The colouring, although not to everyone's liking induces certain fish to spawn and also brings out a more intense colouration in the fish. I have also found the tannins to be beneficial in the control of algae. Regards Mark www.marksfish.f9.co.uk |
#2
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How to test peat H2O for GH & KH
How do you test your peat water for KH and GH. My test kits (cheap ones)
do not show a color change because of the tea water. I do believe that the pH dropped below 6 from a starting 8.3. Also, do you see any bounce back in your pH over time due to the KH being at 3? I use Tetra kits. The water turns blue when the drops are added, changing to yellow with the drops which are put in. Depending on how many drops it takes to make the colour change, determines the hardness. If your water is that tainted you can't see the colour difference, I would maybe suggest leaving a water sample for a few hours to see if any tannins settle out of the water, it is no good filtering through carbon because you will get a false result. I don't have this problem as my water is a very light brown. I have currently bought the pH of my water down to 5.5 to induce my discus to spawn. I change 5 gallons per day at a ratio of 4 gallons peat water to 1 gallons tap water. The water conditions seem to stay very stable, although I wouldn't want to go away for a week and not be able to monitor it. Regards Mark |
#3
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How to test peat H2O for GH & KH
On Tue, 11 Mar 2003 16:09:15 -0000, in rec.aquaria.freshwater.plants
"Marksfish" verruimde onze geest met: I use Tetra kits. peat will mess up (give a higher) KH because it brings weak acids into the water which interfere which the acid titration of the commercial KH kits. For the moment no commercial kKH kit can give you the exact KH when peat is used. also citric acid (used to lower the pH) interferes with the measurement. I'm close to develloping a test which give you both the commercial KH (which is in fact the acid absorbtion capacity) and the real KH. But I need some chemicals to begin testing. PérRµ§h -- A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet? |
#4
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How to test peat H2O for GH & KH
I have currently bought the pH of my water down to 5.5 to induce my discus to spawn. I change 5 gallons per day at a ratio of 4 gallons peat water to 1 gallons tap water. The water conditions seem to stay very stable, although I wouldn't want to go away for a week and not be able to monitor it. My Discuss were quite merrily spawning (that is before the latest calamities I wrote you about) at 6.8.... If you have a settled Ph of 5.5 you must have an almost non existant Kh level - very close to a crash I would have thought - either that or you are adding CO2 (or still have CO2 in the water from the peat filtering). I'd be interested to know what you'd get if you take a bucket of your Peat filtered water and run an airstone in it for an hour.... good luck with the spawing I. |
#5
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How to test peat H2O for GH & KH
If you have a settled Ph of 5.5 you must have an almost non existant Kh
level - very close to a crash I would have thought - either that or you are adding CO2 (or still have CO2 in the water from the peat filtering). I'd be interested to know what you'd get if you take a bucket of your Peat filtered water and run an airstone in it for an hour.... I am still awaiting my new KH test kit (difficult to get hold of around here for some reason). All of my tanks are currently filtered by an air driven sponge filter of some sort, so there is plenty of aeration. What I will do is to record a sample of water for pH and hardness before adding to the tank and I will then record the same when I do a water change 24 hours later and we can do a comparison. Mark |
#6
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How to test peat H2O for GH & KH
"Marksfish" wrote in message news:L%rba.12273$Lq.978511@stones... If you have a settled Ph of 5.5 you must have an almost non existant Kh level - very close to a crash I would have thought - either that or you are adding CO2 (or still have CO2 in the water from the peat filtering). I'd be interested to know what you'd get if you take a bucket of your Peat filtered water and run an airstone in it for an hour.... I am still awaiting my new KH test kit (difficult to get hold of around here for some reason). All of my tanks are currently filtered by an air driven sponge filter of some sort, so there is plenty of aeration. What I will do is to record a sample of water for pH and hardness before adding to the tank and I will then record the same when I do a water change 24 hours later and we can do a comparison. I'll be interested to see the results. All the test kits I seem to be using these days are the Hagen ones which are fairly easy to get hold of & seem to be quite reliable. rgds I. |
#7
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How to test peat H2O for GH & KH
I will run some pH and hardness tests on my filtered peat and post the
results later this weekend. I am interested in seeing if there will be a bounceback in pH due to the high KH of the initial tap water. "Marksfish" wrote in message news:L%rba.12273$Lq.978511@stones... If you have a settled Ph of 5.5 you must have an almost non existant Kh level - very close to a crash I would have thought - either that or you are adding CO2 (or still have CO2 in the water from the peat filtering). I'd be interested to know what you'd get if you take a bucket of your Peat filtered water and run an airstone in it for an hour.... I am still awaiting my new KH test kit (difficult to get hold of around here for some reason). All of my tanks are currently filtered by an air driven sponge filter of some sort, so there is plenty of aeration. What I will do is to record a sample of water for pH and hardness before adding to the tank and I will then record the same when I do a water change 24 hours later and we can do a comparison. Mark |
#8
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How to test peat H2O for GH & KH
"Mike" wrote in message .com... I will run some pH and hardness tests on my filtered peat and post the results later this weekend. I am interested in seeing if there will be a bounceback in pH due to the high KH of the initial tap water. There shouldn't be on the Kh (or at least I've never seen it) but you'd expect a change in the Ph from directly after the water has been through the peat filter on the basis of the CO2 coming back out. I never even measure the Ph now when I do my peat filtering - just the Kh - set that, get rid of the excess CO2 & you know in advance what the Ph will be.... rgds I. |
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