Blackwater extract

Hi all,


I have a pain keepin tyhe PH down with peat, I have to replace it too often it seems as after a few weeks the water clears and the PH slowly starts to climb as I change water.

I would rater something like Blackwater extract to add to the water instead of opening my filter and can add it with water changes.

Can you get this here or will I need to go online?

many thanks,
Mark

Cold tea residue lowers PH. "I've been drinking the answer all along", now there's a strange sentence you won't hear often.
Alder cones and Almond leaves do the trick and you'll bring me some, Brilliant. I'll have to pull out the fancy guilded tea bags:)

I want a steady 6.8, and with the Alder cones and Almond leaves mix I can control my PH before it goes into the tank. It is 8.2 out of the tap and does not drop by more that .2 even over night with an airtsone so this is very handy, sick of peat I really am.




Mark

Resourceful indeed, there have been some great posts lately regarding culturing your own requirements and so on. great stuff, this another useful nugget.



mark

mark i have some cappata leave s ill drop into you when im collecting them plants

Are you using enough peat in the filter Mark? Up until last week when I sold my planted tank my ph was a steady 6.2 and would stay that way for more that a month before anything needed to be touched. I simply swapped out half of the peat for new stuff during filter maintanance. My tap water is 8.0 coming out.

Jay

Spot on Jay, I do 2 water changes a week so I think this is using up the peat faster. Peat does a great job but its longevity isnt great.

When you gave me "his majesty" the L330 you put me on to the fact that he needs exceptional water quality, I am following this advice to the letter:)



Mark

fishmad1234 wrote:

mark i have some cappata leave s ill drop into you when im collecting them plants

And I shall gladly accept them:)

Cheers matey. See you Sat.


Mark

Hi lads am I just being lucky or lazy. I only do water changes once a month and change roughly 25%. My ph stays constant even after water changes. I live in a hardwater area and dont add anything to the water for PH adjustment.
I do use safestart for all water changes though and all my fish are happy and healthy.
I have bogwood in the tank and that seems to keep the ph and hardness level constant. When I originaly set the tank up I had serious trouble getting it right but I used the blackwater extract and the bog wood and it was fine.

once a month is grand, if you have jack in it. water left a month will be stale. you say ph wat about ammonia, nitrites and nitrates?

I have both undergravel filtration and a box filter in the corner. I have discus rams and caucatoids and all are happy and healthy.The discus even feed out of my hand. When I used to keep fish years ago I successfully bred several different chiclids corys and bristlenoses. The only fish I have ever had trouble keeping are siameese fighters. I have never done water changes any more frequently than monthly as in my humble opinion changing too much water will change the water hardness and ph levels and it means putting chemicals into the water more frequently than I like. I am carefull not to overfeed and my plants are thriving.(when the rams arent eating them)
The NO2, NO3 and ammonia levels are all well within the parameters on the test kits.
I am open to correction and I may be totally wrong in my opinions. Thats why I posted my reply. I would like to hear opinions and yours is taken on board.
Would you recommend doing 25% more frequently or smaller amounts more frequently.
Like everyone on the site I want to get better at what I am doing.

Any recomendations on getting the dwarfs to spawn.
I will be taking the tank apart in the next two weeks and would love some advice on setting it back up for the dwarfs.

I have a pain keepin tyhe PH down with peat, I have to replace it too often it seems as after a few weeks the water clears and the PH slowly starts to climb as I change water.

Reverse Osmosis/Rainwater
&
HCl
Regards
C

Maybe thats because it can kill ya John

JohnH wrote:

Ah, but so can Paracetemols, among many other non-prescription medicines!

When I was a lot younger (here he goes again...) you could buy HCl in the ironmongers shop. - Then it was called 'Spirits of Salts'.
It could kill you then too.

John

So can a combination of oxygen and water kill you.....in fact they are probably the two biggest killers in our culture. (I won't explain here as to why though....well not yet anyway).

John, in my day.....every fish book recommended adding HCl or NaOH to change pH (you can get NaOH from woodies....even nowadays).

Back to original question.....is there any particular reason why a pH of 6.8 is needed? Maybe it is the components in natural waters at pH 6.8 that are important and not the pH.
If Peat is not altering the pH then the tap-water must be heavily buffered.

Is the peat sphagnum moss peat?

I'm not a great fan of messing with water chemistry unless it is clear why there is a need to change it.

There is much more to water chemistry than those items for which one can buy a test-kit.

There's a question from Pat on breeding dwarf cichlids....maybe that is best on a new thread.

ps. HCl.....maybe a good source is to eat some pretty bad food and a few pints of bad lager.

igmillichip wrote:

JohnH wrote:

Ah, but so can Paracetemols, among many other non-prescription medicines!

When I was a lot younger (here he goes again...) you could buy HCl in the ironmongers shop. - Then it was called 'Spirits of Salts'.
It could kill you then too.

John

So can a combination of oxygen and water kill you.....in fact they are probably the two biggest killers in our culture. (I won't explain here as to why though....well not yet anyway).

John, in my day.....every fish book recommended adding HCl or NaOH to change pH (you can get NaOH from woodies....even nowadays).

Back to original question.....is there any particular reason why a pH of 6.8 is needed? Maybe it is the components in natural waters at pH 6.8 that are important and not the pH.
If Peat is not altering the pH then the tap-water must be heavily buffered.

Is the peat sphagnum moss peat?

I'm not a great fan of messing with water chemistry unless it is clear why there is a need to change it.

There is much more to water chemistry than those items for which one can buy a test-kit.

There's a question from Pat on breeding dwarf cichlids....maybe that is best on a new thread.

ps. HCl.....maybe a good source is to eat some pretty bad food and a few pints of bad lager.

The fish I have prefer between 6.5 7.5 range, with or two either side slightly, so being 8.2 out of the tap, above the confort zone, 6.8 is what the peat is giving me, it is Eheim filter peat, chucked out the box from the last one I used. So I prefer to keep it there within .2 either way is fine. Things are runnig well if te recovery of my Bala in an indication so I wish to keep it that way. It takes nearly a full box of peat to bring it down to that level, and doesn't last very long.

I have a few bigguns in there Ian, a lot of protein and veg go in to the tank so water changes are required twice a week, I can do 1 change but its not really enough.
I have in my 450 a Panaque 3 rusty, 2 bristleNose, Syndontis Decorus Birchir 13 Loach 4 Giant Upsidedown Asian cats and a Bala Shark, Silver Dollar (Rescued as a baby and getting big) 4 Bosemans Rainbow (Going to John) and a humpy Ruby Shark, someone please tell me if any of these should not be housed together?

I add 20L a day, and a 20% mid week and a 40% every saturday or sunday and my PH starts to rise after about 3 weeks or slightly less. Even with all this I only have to do filter maint every 10 weeks. I use a 400lph pump and defuser to maximise the mechanical filtration from a deep patch of gravel in the center of the tank and this is where the main deposit of waste can be found, which comes out in the 20 litre change, one square 10" spot has most of the waste from the tank, works a treat and keeps filter maint down to a minimum. SO I want to rid myself of peat as it almost tripes my filter maintenance.

I would rather something not dangerour, Kids about.

Mark

so your changing near 100% of the water a week, that's a fair oul bit

Dar if the water was good from the tap, I'd do 100% almost daily:) Clean water junkie:)


mark

but would this not flush too much of the good bacteria out, also maybe this is why your peat ain't up to scratch as it's getting flushed and not getting a chance to take effect? do you let you water sit before adding as the ph is supposed to lower after a day or two (i maybe wrong on the whole lot of my post, but hey it's worth a mention)

Judging by the recovery of the bala, the water is halthy, and never lost a fish from this tank, or even had a sick fish, Fingers crossed. Salt helps too and a Ricca basket for Nitrate control.
I tihnk, can not state that, with that much fresh water the filtration bacteria will drop off relative to te amount of food it can get, less food for bacteria means there are less toxins so it is relatively evened out, that being 100% a day but you could suppliemt the water with bacteria.

I dont think my current routine is doing any harm and the fish seem to appreciate it.

The PH drops in a few hours back to 6.8 after I add the peat. It is taking effect, it is just being depleted, which is fine except I would rather do this externally an not inside the cannister. Also every time I add new peat it browns up te tank for a few hours more than I'd like


I just strive to provide the best possible conditions for my plecos and co


Mark

Plecs and a host of other fish from the Amazon love water that is stained like that. The regions they originate from are full of tributaries and rivers that are full of tannins. Believe it or not, some hobbyists actually go to a lot of trouble to replicate these conditions. Doesnt make for great viewing in my opinion its quite a feat to be able to replicate a biotope like that.

Jay

I must admit that I'm slightly confused now over the pH up and down events etc etc.

I am in favour in frequent water changes (but some fish don't get frequent massive changes).

It would be true that frequent changes dilutes the water-bound nitrosofying bacteria, but if the water change is reducing ammonia and nitrite then that may balance things. Also, the water-bound bacteria multiply much faster than filter-bound nitrifiers.

With some of them fish you mention Mark, an acid pH would be better as that would help them rid all of that ammonia from their normal heavy feeding. The frequet water changes would also help in that respect, as would the salt.
The frequent water changes will also keep the phenols and pheromones levels down...something a filter can't really do.

ian

Viperbot wrote:

Plecs and a host of other fish from the Amazon love water that is stained like that. The regions they originate from are full of tributaries and rivers that are full of tannins. Believe it or not, some hobbyists actually go to a lot of trouble to replicate these conditions. Doesnt make for great viewing in my opinion its quite a feat to be able to replicate a biotope like that.

Jay

Duly noted, I am not worried about the visuals. So if this occurs and its no probs for the fish or as you say they prefer it then I am happy tbh, I guess I was thinking the Panaque likes it clean n clear. You learn another new bit every say.

Cheers.

mark

Panaques like it clean for sure but it doesnt have to be clear. You could try running floss in the filter to help remove the colour or long term you can try to adjust them to a higher ph by slowly reducing the ammount of peat you are using until your not using any. This however may not be good for them in the long run, and will certainly affect anything breeding. There are liquid water clarifiers out there too but personally Im not a fan of them.

Jay

They all seen to be fine with the staining, its good so, just overactive keeping on my part Jay most likely. Why can't I just say "OK thats running fine, I'll leave it now" and stop fussing.

I temporarily moved my Syno Decorus, he makes audible noise, like a broken whining, obviously he wasn't happy being out of water for the 5 aseconds, just never heard any of my fish do that.


"If it's brown drink it down, if it's black send it back"
Homer Simpson.




Mark