"I prefer round margerine tubs to the usual rectangular food containers,
but often use ceramic items like soup bowls and sugar bowls from the
thrift shop. Things that once had lids have an inturned rim that keeps
the peat from scattering too much. For the plastic containers, I always
throw in a few smooth pebbles or marbles. They provide weight, and
something for the male to press the female against during spawning."
Where does one obtain marbles these days? I think I have some pogs and maybe an old nintendo leftover from my early childhood, but no marbles. I was also thinking I could silicone a ceramic tile to the bottom of my containers. What do you think?
"I rarely use more than a single Jiffy pellet, nuked to a boil in the
microwave (in a couple of cups of water) and throughly rinsed under the
cold tap to remove fines and any residual solubles."
Is this the 703 pellet? Where do you get the pellets from? I read that all jiffy pellets have fertilizers in them.
"The peat should have little or no effect on your pH. Did you fail to
boil it and rinse it enough? Is your water unbuffered? [That is, too low
KH?] If the latter, consider adding some "Equilibrium" o/e to bring hardness up a bit, counter the toxic effects of any added salt, and keep the pH from being unstable."
I boiled it and rinsed it. Jeremy, a fellow AKA and NWK member, was nice enough to give me a nice sized bag of peat. Thanks Jeremy! My water is moderately hard with conductivity at about 320 (although I do have equilibirum from when I was using RO water). I guess I'm just using too much peat. I'll figure this out yet. Thanks again.
-Kris
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