whoa this dropped of the page

[sas]

Ok here goes, going to take the leap and get a bigger tank so I can cut done on the number of small tanks. It will be a planted tank, low to med. light plants and house my discus, loaches and what ever else I can fit in? I'd like to try a different approach on the substrate? Has anyone tried those peat plates put on the very bottom of the tank and then using a good covering of fine sand? Our water is very hard so that's why I thought I'd try these plates? We already use peat pellets in some of our tanks. Any thoughts.......Thanks 

[babblefish1960]

This sounds like a very logical approach to the water parameters you already have, another option you may wish to consider would be to use actual earth from under the grass or other safe spot on your farm, and put about an inch under the gravel or sand. Alternatively, or additionally, according to your proclivity, you could also use some mopani or other suitable pieces of driftwood to get the water to naturally acidify, and this should aid in reducing the high level of hardness I believe you said you had. Other than these sorts of options, I wouldn't do anything too drastic with your water, otherwise it becomes a laboratory chemical soup that must be monitored and adjusted daily. No one likes that much maintenance, I'm sure you have a few other things to spend that amount of time on.

Good luck with that, and keep us posted as to how you resolve this little dilemna.

[kennyman]

I do not know about peat plates, but for a similar tank I set up last month I used Black Earth under the gravel. I had some left over from last summer in the garage and it is very high in organic content such as peat and ground wood fiber. I am also using peat in my canister and a bunch of driftwood but it is not enough to bring the ph below the high 7's. the natural buffering capacity of my source water is too high to allow significant ph drop.

I will have to give in and mix RO water with my source water to create a mix for water changes. This will reduce the total alkalinity and is the only reasonable way to get the PH to drop in my situation.

[babblefish1960]

Interesting point kennyman, there is a third possibility though, if you have plants, one of the things you can do is to plant plants that strip out the elements more easily such as fast growing stem plants. This of course would require extensive reading and experimenting to see what effects have the most affect on the stability of the water column. Who knew pets that don't claw the furniture or pee on the carpet would require so much science, isn't it fun?

[normc]

I have used peat plates
1. Don't pre soak make an allfull mess.
2. I haven't noticed any difference with or without.

Next time I'll try babbles suggestion 

[sas]

Thank you for all the replies . As it stands I went with a smaller size gravel and spent extra $ on Mopani? I'm still too much of a newbie to try earth under gravel or Flourite . I figured that the plants that I'm going to have aren't very hard to grow and have thicker roots so they could handle the gravel? I know babble that you said you can't grow potatoes in rocks but .      I'm also going to continue with the peat pellets in my filters so hopefully that will be enough? I'll have to try a smaller tank with the soil idea? Not sure I'd be brave enough to gather it from outside.

[Toss]

I had a tank with soil under the sand. It worked great for the plants and breeding. It was a small though, I don't know if it going to work for a bigger one. You would loose the freedom to move the plants around or redoing your aquascaping. As soon as you uproot a plant, you take a chunk of the soil out into the water.

[kennyman]

There is a book that deals with using natural substates written by D Walstad. She is also a moderator at APC in the forum created for natural planted aquariums. I have not read her book yet, but I have used her discussion forum as well as talk some very knowledgeable people in this club to learn more about natural substates. They are surprisingly easy to use but you have to let go of the concept of rigid control over the tank and slip into a more relaxed management role.

You should not cap with sand as it can inhibit diffusion of O2 into the nutrient rich substrate. The nutrients are mostly held in the substrate by ionic bonding and exchanged directly with plant roots. Also the slow decomposition of the substrate produces trace carbon which is captured by roots of plants.

There are limitations to the system though such as sticking to low-moderate light plants. Not pushing growth with expensive lighting and not keeping tons of fish in the tank. But I can live with that so for me this has been very rewarding. My tank has a long way to go yet but so far it has been the simplest, lowest maintenance tank I have had