is peat beneficial in a planted tank?

[aspen]

is peat beneficial in a planted tank?

i would say, that it would depend on what you want to do. imo, i would never use peat in a tank where i wanted to get maximum benefit from the light i was providing. water clarity is important in getting the light all the way through your water column. most of us would like to see more plant growth near the lower portions of our tanks, esp when we want to provide cover down low in our dwarf tanks. it is better to soften water by cutting it with r/o, than to use peat.

basically, the more photosynthesising taking place, the more plant matter you can build, the more nutrient uptake is taking place hence the water itself can support more fish life. by adding peat this will be lessened.

in a low tech tank where nitrate reduction is done by larger water changes more frequently, you need to use a lot of peat to get a decent effect.

agree or disagree?

rick

 

[farm41]

I don't use peat in my planted tanks, I also don't use RO in them either. All my planted tanks are tap water. They are just for display, if some breeding happens in there, and it does, it's great. But the tank as a whole gets what it needs. Sometimes my planted tanks are used for fry growout, but mostly just for looking at. All the water modification goes on in the breeding tanks. In the breeding tanks the peat stained water is acceptable.

I do use several handfuls of peat beneath the substrate when setting up a planted tank though.

 

[Fogelhund]

Rick - probably stating the obvious here, but it depends on the plants in question. For some plants the peat could adjust the water parameters in ways that would be detrimental. Others there would be obvious benefits.

 

[Ghazanfar Ghori]

A handful of peat mixed in with the bottom layer when setting up a
new planted tank helps accelarate the tank getting established. It
provides organic matter right from the start.

 

[laetacara1]

In all but one of our planted tanks, we filter over peat that we have in mesh bags in our HOB filters. The amount of peat we use is enough to adjust our pH downward as needed. We already have super soft tap water. The color difference in our tanks is really not noticeable. If we dump some of this water into a white plastic bucket we can then see some tinge to it but it not really that dark, and there is certainly not enough water darkening to have much of an effect on the transmission of light through it. Of course, the color effect is no doubt proportional to the amount used. With our soft water, little peat is needed to achieve the pH adjustments we seek. If we were trying to use peat in harder water I'm sure we'd have to use more and the color effect would be more noticeable.

 

[gigafish]

when you are speaking of peat, what kind of peat are you using? I'm using 100% natural sphagus peat from home depot. Is that a good thing or bad. It didn't bother my fish at all. In philadelphia the water perimeter is ph 7.4, dh 12 and very low buffering capacity. I say aroud 2-3. I forgot what it really was.

 

[aspen]

yes gigafish, that is the type pf peat we are talking about. as has been said, the harder your water (actually the higher the kh) the more peat staining will be required to move the ph. my kh is about 4, and my water gets very black before any difference is noticable.

rick