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NetMax 16-06-2004 04:13 PM

Buffering ability of peat, was Whats more important PH or KH
 
"Iain Miller" wrote in message
news:eEMzc.219$yi3.96@newsfe4-gui...

"Bob" wrote in message
...
"xtr396472" wrote in message
...
I have started to use Flourish Excel to feed my plants instead of

DIY
yeast
CO2
The only problem is my tap water KH is 3 and pH at least 7.6
What is more important to maintain the pH or the KH. I would like

to get
the
pH down to around 7 with out using CO2 just for breeding purposes.
Any thought apprec.
Thanks



pre-filtering thru peat will work for sure.
It is far easier and cheaper then co2, the only downside, is it is a

little
messier.


Indeed it will (I do it).

Its important for the OP to understand what goes on there though....it
lowers the Ph because it eats up the Kh. There's an added twist to it

in
that when you prefilter through peat you also get a LOT of CO2 in the

water
initially. This "out-gasses" in a few hours but the key to doing this

and
knowing where you are is therefore not to measure Ph but to track Kh as

you
are filtering the water. This is because the Ph will be artificially

low on
account of the excess CO2 that gets into the water during the filtering
process. I've meaured it (by measuring Ph and Kh & reading off the

relevant
tables) at over 120ppm straight out the peat filter.

I.


A little OT, but I read an article that implied that peat had some
buffering qualities. In the case where the tap water was kH-poor (ie: 2
dkH, low gH, but high pH), using peat to lower the pH worked better than
other methods (CO2 injection, RO, DI, acids etc). The author didn't
expand further, so I'm uncertain if there is any validity to this, and if
there are particular circumstances where it's applicable.

It would be nice to have something which would gently drop *and*
stabilize the pH in the high 6s or low 7s.
--
www.NetMax.tk




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