Peat Moss

[leonardbez]

Hi want to know how much peat to use per liter of water.My fish room have 20 tanks and i use about 4000L water per week. My water comes from the tap frue carbon filter into 2 x 1300L tanks for ageing the water.Can i put a peat filter after the carbon filter and run the water pass the peat ones or must the peat be in the water perminent.

[Jhhnn]

Some people keep peat in their filters continuously. Others, particularly the German discus pioneers like Degen and Schmidt-Focke used large drums of peat, treated their water in a single pass.

When I kept discus in the early 90's, I used peat in my ageing barrel in homemade box filters, w/ foam top and bottom to contain the stuff, and an airstone to achieve flow thru the filter...

IIRC, I used ~1 cup/ 30 gal of water at the time, let it steep for a couple of days in the ageing barrel, changed out the peat when I changed water. You'll need to experiment with your own water and setup to get the results you want. I used "pure Canadian peat" from my local hardware store- the dark brown/ black fine textured crumbly stuff. it came packaged in squarish plastic bags of various sizes.... some quite large. never had a problem with it. If, for some reason, you need to delay a water change, turn off the air to the filter, as it'll keep working if you don't, drive the pH quite low...

I'll probably return to peat when and if my young discus grow up and decide they want to breed.