using nylon stockings to add peat to a tank without mess?

I'm doing something like this now, but want to avoid the whole "big bucket
of water" thing, and be able to go from the tap right tothe tank (my water
is OK, just needs a bit of softening). the idea was to use the stocking in
the tank itself insteadof in a pre-treating bucket..
-JD


Although the stocking works, you have to remember that the peat will compact
with a lot fewer pathways for the water to run through unless you can give
it a squeeze every now and again to break it up. If you do that though, the
chances are that you will have sediment enter the tank. Another thing with
continually running the water through the peat is that your pH will
continually be dropping and you won't have a great amount of control,
possibly leading to a pH crash. This doesn't generally happen with the more
expensive aquarium peat you can buy, but garden peat can have a ph as low as
5!

Another potential possibility could be to fluidise it as you would a
phosphate remover? Don't know what it would be like and you would have the
same lack of control over the pH, but you wouldn't get the "tracking"
through the peat as you would with the stocking.

Last thought. How about something like a nitragon which fits to the tap, but
instead of a nitrate removing resin you had peat? I'm sure something
reasonably easy could be built along those sort of lines.

Mark