# Activated Carbon and Peat Moss



## OVT (Nov 29, 2011)

Peat moss adds tannins and lowers the pH by rotting quickly. When used in a canister filter, it is usually changed every month or so.

Using activated carbon as a storage for nutrients is an interesting idea. There is still some debate on whether it will dump the collected chemicals back into the water when fully saturated.

The idea behind CEC is that high CEC particles will absorb extra nutrients and then slowly release them when there us not enough in the water.

With peat and carbon, the processes are much quicker and impossible to control, leading to higher, quicker changes to the water. Without knowing more about your water chemistry, plant load and type, lighting etc etc I personally flying blind here.

Maybe someone with more experience can contribute.

My personal advise is to leave peat and carbon out if your tank. If you really concerned about CEC, I would either use a thin bottom layer of lava rock or to add lava rock to your canister filter, if you are using one.

Best of luck.
v3


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## zachsta18 (Apr 11, 2014)

Ah, didn't know peat had such a short lifespan. I was hoping for longer.

However, I have *tons* of lava rock. I didn't know it had high CEC. I'll just put lavarock on the bottom and leave the carbon and peatmoss to the filter as you said. Problem solved! Thanks!


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## OVT (Nov 29, 2011)

Perfect 

That will also help avoid all the hassles of different layers getting all mixed up over time.

v3


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## lochaber (Jan 23, 2012)

I'm not sure if most lava rock has much CEC, any more so then sand/gravel.

Also, some of the reasons I heard not too use peat was that it was too acidic to function well as a substrate. Not sure if adding oystershell, coral, marble chips, or some such carbonate would help or not.

Almost anything clay based will add a good amount of CEC, as will just regular dirt. some additive-free kitty litter might be the cheapest, most readily available source. I'd just up and add some dirt and cap it with blasting grit, but I'm pretty biased towards dirted tanks to begin with.


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