What's Reducing The Nitrates...

[LolaLouie]

I am lowering my pH using peat so for the past few days I have had buckets of water with a bag of peat in them soaking.

The nitrates in my tap are 40ppm (and 20 in my tank) but when I tested the water in these buckets the nitrate was 0ppm!

Why is this? Is it the peat reducing the nitrates? Or is it leaving the water out for a couple of days?

I'm excited by the fact that I may be able to have a tank with no nitrates but am not sure what it is thats making the water better.

Thanks

 

[Colin_T]

leaving the water to stand won't get rid of nitrates so I guess it would be the peat is somehow trapping or binding up the nitrates. Monitor this closely and see what happens. You could be onto a new way of removing nitrates from water.

 

[LolaLouie]

Hmm interesting. Would have been nice if leaving water out reduces the nitrates as that would be pretty easy to do. Will test my tap water to make sure the water company hasn't suddenly started providing London with good quality water.. otherwise i guess that makes it the peat?!?

 

[LolaLouie]

Nope London still pumping out 40ppm of nitrate in the water. I just tested my tank water and it has gone down to 10ppm after having put peat in the filter today.

This is great it seems peat is the miracle cure to london water, it lowers pH, softens water and reduces nitrates!!

Finally I can have more sensitive fish!

 

[Colin_T]

now what sort of peat is it and how much did you use and in what size container of water? And how was the peat actually situated in the water?

 

[LolaLouie]

The peat was one i got from my LFS I just tipped it into filter bags (also bought from LFS) I put one of these bags in my external Fluval 305 (enough to fill 1 half section of the filter).

The peat in the buckets is just in a bag floating in the water. The container of water is around 5 gallons.

 

[Colin_T]

cool, so your LFS sells magic peat. Try and find out what brand it is. You might be able to buy it from a hardware or garden centre for less.

 

[Bignose]

Peat works by being an ion-exchange medium. Typically, it is used to acidify water because the positive ions dissolved in the water are exchanged for hydrogen ions. e.g. the potassium K+, sodium Na+, calcium Ca2+, and magnesium Ma2+ are exchanged for an equal-charge number of H+ ions. However, peat can also exchange negative ions, too. Nitrate in the water is an ion NO3-. It can be exchanged for Cl-, Br-, F-, SO3-, PO4-, or any other equal-charge amounts of negative ions.

Ion-exchange mediums usually work by adsorbing what is most prevalent in the surrounding environment and releasing what was adsorbed before. Peat usually comes form acidic waters, so it is saturated with H+ because acidic waters are rich in H+. If the water you placed it in was rich in NO3-, and there was none on the peat, the peat would exchange what ions is has for the NO3-.

This effect isn't permanent, however. In time, the peat will re-release the NO3- back. Once something else more prevalent comes along, that more prevalent molecule will start knocking NO3- back off. The peat will be constantly exchanging ions over and over and over again. So, you might get a temporary relief from the nitrates, but it isn't a long-term solution. You'd have to keep putting in new peat before the old peat released the nitrated back into the water.

 

[Colin_T]

having said all that Bignose, it still seams like a good way to drop the nitrates in the tap water before use. Just use peat in a bucket of water, it will drop the PH, hardness and nitrates and then you can use the peat on the garden. And the end result is clean soft acid water ready for the tank.

 

[LolaLouie]

Thanks for that! And yeh I agree with Colin, seems logical that it could be some sort of cheap solution to RO water?!? Well I'll see what happens, I@m going to do 5 gallon daily water changes with peat water until all my levels are as I want them and I'll see whether that inludes nitrates as well!

Thanks!