Keta-Peat nuggets

gmh

gmh

AC Members
Feb 5, 2007
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Santa Barbara area
Does anyone use this filter media?It is basically condensed peat in a nugget form. I bought some at Drs Foster and Smith and put it in my spare media baskets in my hob filter. The idea was to get some of the benefits of peat without the mess.
It's been in the filter nearly a month now and I have not noticed much change in PH (around 7.7) or staining of the water, but it does seem to function as a decent filtering media.
What I am wondering is how often should I change the stuff. There are no instructions on the jar. I just opened one of the media baskets and the Keta-Peat looks the same as when I put it in so I am tempted to leave it in there for a while.
 
What are your hardness levels? You'll need to determine those as pH will not generally lower itself if the water is too hard. Furthermore, I find lowering pH much more difficult than raising it.

The peat should last for a long time in there and will continue leaching out tannic acids to your tankwater. The presence of the tannic acids will minimize fungal and bacterial infections on a side note.:)
 
I've never used the peat nuggets, but I don't find it that messy to use peat bought in bags from garden stores or nurseries. Make sure that it doesn't have any additives, fertilizers, and the like. I just line a colander with a thin layer of filter floss, put the peat on top of the floss and put the colander over a 5G bucket. I boil a large pot of water and slowly pour over the peat to rinse out any excess tannins and or particles of stuff. When its nice and wet, I put it in a media bag. Lasts easily a month and puts a nice tea stained color on my Amazon biotope planted tank. The color of my Discus and Cardinal Tetras really pops in this water. The bag of peat I get is a 4 quart size and it costs .99 cents. I use a little over a quart for my 75G. I put it in the last media space, closest to the top, of my Rena XP3 canister filter. I would think you could easily use media bags for your HOB as well. My water out of the tap is fairly hard, 8.0pH with 12dh, and I've never seen the peat lower the pH, but it does lower my hardness a couple of points.
 
Thanks for the feedback guys. I just checked the media basket and after a month the peat nuggets still look the same as when I first put them in. So I will keep them in there a while. Still no sign of released tannins but at least the nuggets seem to be working as a filter media.
I tryed putting peat in a media bag once with poor results. Guess I should have boiled it first. May try that in the future.
 
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