What to use peat or discus buffer or any other ???

[jonieeee]

Hi,
Need advice to lower PH. What are you guys using? I have a non planted tank and I use Seachem discus buffer to maintain pH 6.3-6.6
Is that ok? or do you think using peat will be better ? Or any other suggestion?
I also aged the water 48 hours before putting the discus buffer.
THanks a lot.


cheers,
jon

[Greggy]

An efficient and carefully configured D.I.Y. CO2 sytem can reduce your pH and also be quite reliable and cheap to build/operate. My own CO2 system (which is similar to the DIY systems floating around on the Internet but with a few improvements) reduces my pH from around 7.6-7.8 down to an almost neutral pH of 7.0-7.1

Regards,

Greggy

[ILLUSN]

i used to use phosphate based buffers to condition my agged water, it works well, its a lot less hit and miss then peat.

[Mitch]

I use phosphate buffers, cause im not relly fond of the tea colour that peat stains your water, but you then have to deal with the high phosphate levels/alge, and you don't have any plants to use any up. not really a big deal though.

[ktakeshi]

seachem discus buffer is a good idea..
although it has phospate, as long as you water change your tank weekly, and dont have the lights on for more than 10hrs/day, you will be fine..

if you dont mind the tea color, but dont like the idea of manually putting peat inside your tank,
you can get Sera Peat Extract,
which stain ur water, but are fair easier to than waiting for the peat to extract in water, and to have to take them out later.

[ktakeshi]

oh, and it is typically not necessary to age your water that long, if you have used "prime" in the first place...12-24 hrs,
is much more practical, the important thing is actually to heat those water, so as you dont shock the fish.. especially in winter...

i have a 40L water drum next to my tank, and i installed a 1200l/ph pump inside it, and i age the water inside the tank for 1 full dar,
and then i syphon 40l water water out of my tank, and then turn on the pump to fill up the fish tank in around , it normally finished in around 3mins time.

and because the water are actually sprayed in, i minimise the risk of shocking the fish with water change