PEAT BALLS TO LOWER AQUARIUM pH

Hello, I'm Richard from the Pawn Guru channel on YouTube, and in this video I'm going to talk about peat balls. Now, given that probably about 90%, if not more, of the fish that you buy for tropical fish tanks come from either South America or Asia, It's pretty important to have the water right for those fish, and by right I mean ideally a pH of around 6.5. There's really only the live bearers and Malawi cichlids and so on that like the pH higher. They tend to prefer 7.5 and above. So for all your tetra species, all your South American cichlids, all your labyrinth fish, including fighting fish, rasboras, danios. All of those fish prefer the pH around about 6.5, and that's often pretty difficult to achieve. Or if you do achieve it, it's pretty difficult to keep that pH stable, and that's because of numerous factors. Just by doing water changes with high pH water, that affects it. Having gravel in the bottom of your tank, having certain rocks in your tank, that can keep the pH up. So you really need something that's going to bring the pH down gradually. and keep it there if you've got the time you can of course go with a load of acids every day test the water for pH if it's creeping up put a bit more acid in but to be honest that to me that's a bit of a faff on an ideal thing would be something that you just throw in the tank and forget about don't just think that this is ordinary peat that you buy from a garden center or something you can just dig up off the surface on a peat bog this is from way down in a peat bog just above the bedrock Where the concentration of all the acids are at their highest. That makes these reasonably potent things. But if you just chuck them in a tank, they'll slowly release all the tannins and all the humic acid. Gradually reduce the pH and hopefully keep it there. These are available in four different sizes. We've got extra large, which will do approximately 250 to 300 litres. Large, which does approximately 75 to 100 litres. Medium. which will do roughly 40 to 50 liters and small which will do 20 to 25 liters. This is the peat. It's almost like soft licorice or ice cream. It can be easily molded into balls and you can see just how black it is. Well look at the state of my hands already. It's absolutely laden with goodness. See there's no big sticks or any fibrous stuff in there like there would be if it was just off the top of a peat bog. This is from way down. So you may be thinking I'll just go to a peat bog and dig it out myself, but if you start digging down into a peat bog, by the time you get 18 inches, 2 feet, it's just going to fill up with water. You're not going to be able to get way down to that good layer of peat from the frozen north of England. And if you want to see just how frozen the north can be, watch this. Well, I'm on my way up to get some peat from the quarry, which is way up on the hilltop. Fairly near my house now, and it's a beautiful day here. Lovely and sunny, no snow, no ice, lovely. Maybe a different story up there though. Well, it's still sunny up here, but the weather's a little bit different. It's totally white, and the road's just like a sheet of ice. It's awesome. As you can see, it's in a reasonably inhospitable sort of a place. Even in the summer, it can be snowing. Now, I tell people that I dig this stuff from the frozen north hotline. Outside edge of this, it's totally frozen solid, so I'm gonna have to dig it away to get into the We're probably about four or five foot down, just can't get to walk onto a moor and start to dig it, fill in with water. The quarry where they're eating away at the face of the peat, the only way you can get to that special layer of peat. So when people say, oh I'm just going to go to the garden centre and buy some peat, make peat balls out of that, it is not the same stuff. This stuff is really special. Look at that, it's absolutely beautiful stuff. Just like soft plasticine or soft licorice. And it's started snowing again, I'm going to put the video camera away. I'm so glad I bought this jacket. And that was in the middle of summer. I'm only kidding. That was in late autumn, early winter that. And I barely got out. Now if you want to buy these peat balls, the extra large ones are available in singles. Large ones in a pack of five. Medium in a pack of five. Small, whoops. Small also in a pack of five. Just follow the link in the video description, that'll take you to my eBay site. And the good news is that if you're in America, you can save on shipping. I'm in the UK and it costs quite a lot to send stuff to America. But there is now a supplier of all sizes of peat balls called Great Wave Engineering. So click the link for them, that's also in the video description as well if you're in the US. One thing to say before I go is that... Water changes can affect your pH, if you're trying to maintain a low stable pH then you're changing, I don't know, 20-25% of water once or twice a week, which some people feel the need to do. If you're changing it with high pH water, your pH is going to be low then it's going to come up, then it's going to go low and it's going to come up, which isn't too good for the fish. If you have really efficient filtration You don't need to do such big water changes so I'm not going to bang on about this too much because this is a video about peat balls but look at the video about BioHome filter media. This is some of the BioHome media, this one is BioHome Ultimate, it's an absolutely incredible media and I had to actually get this made to my specs because there wasn't a good enough media on the market. Now that might sound a little bit pompous, but I wanted a media that supported Aerobic and anaerobic bacteria because I wanted a media to consume ammonia, nitrite and also nitrate. Most medias only support aerobic bacteria. So they consume ammonia and nitrite, and that actually causes your filter to produce masses of nitrate. Your nitrate builds up, which means you have to do large, regular water changes. And if you can lower the nitrate, it means you don't need to do such big, regular water changes. You can cut it down to maybe 10% a week, which, even if you're using high pH water, will make no difference at all, really, to your tank. It's going to create a much more stable environment. That particular media takes roughly two or three weeks to mature with the aerobic bacteria, which is pretty much faster than any other media on the market. It takes roughly four to six months to mature with the anaerobic bacteria, which always takes a hell of a lot longer to develop in media. That'll grow right in the middle of that media. And once it does reach a reasonable population, it's going to start to bring the nitrates down. Typically, we're hearing back that it'll reduce them from 40 or 50 parts per million right down to 5 or 10 parts per million after 4 to 6 months. Which is incredible. It's really a holy grail for people who want to keep low pH fish because you don't need to mess about with your water. You can keep the water changes minimal and you can maintain a low stable pH using the peat balls. Right, this has been in, it has to have been in for a good 18 months. Oh, look at that. You can still see the stuff coming out of it. Look at that, absolutely incredible. Pouring out. So if you did want to drop the pH a little bit quicker than the normal one to two weeks that the peat balls take, just do that every couple of days. Look at that. And honestly, that's been in for a good 18 months. Incredible. That'll soon clear. Your filter will take that muck out. Any questions you've got, just stick them in the comments section below, And thank you very much for watching.