[APD] Peat in substrate

["Steve Pushak" <teban at powersonic_bc.ca>]

After thinking about my last posting on peat & substrate, there is one
more -possible- benefit for peat. By that I mean that I can't recall anybody
else mentioning this. I had set up two identical tanks with pots containing
various mixtures of sand, clay, peat & in a few nutrients. One tank also had
peat in some pots in varying amounts.

Both tanks developed green water & did not flourish however they had no fish
& were intentionally P limited. Each tank had only a few grams of bone meal
in a couple of pots. They had plenty of everything else including CO2, light
& circulation.

Months went by; I added some fish & fish food, a little potassium nitrate
now & then. Fish got no fish food for many weeks but continued to survive in
both aquariums.

The tank without peat developed some extremely aggressive slimy-filamentous
algae (a mixture?).

The tank with peat didn't have a problem with that algae.

Growth in both tanks is very very slow (but the H poly is red!). I think the
peat tank is slowly winning but if the algae is only an experimental
confound, then the growth observations are meaningless.

I've harvested some of the slime & should continue to do so & clear the
water in both tanks to restart things more fairly.

Hypothesis: humic acids from peat helps inhibit growth of bacteria and/or
some types of algae.

Anybody else care to offer evidence to support or destabilize this
hypothesis??

Also, I've found peat to be a pretty good pH buffer right near 7 as close as
I can read my kits. A better kit would be nicer & I think you have to let
things run for a bit to stabilize. Peat out of the bag is going to be a
little more acidic I suspect.

Steve P

PS Do you follow the convention that if you keep the same subject line,
you're on the same topic but if you have a new subject line, you get to have
a new thread? Netiquette should be the thread originator gets to clarify
what "his" question or hypothesis was. D'accord?

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