Creating a soft water environment naturally

[AZL]

I have two freshwater tanks stocked with soft water loving fish and live in a hard water area. Over time I've been working to lower PH, KH,and GH as gently and naturally as possible. My strategy has been planting heavily to reduce KH via CO2 uptake from plants, Indian almond leaves and bogwood, and mixing in a % of RO water with tap water, re-mineralising where needed to prevent crashes. Currently the tank stocked with a plec, corys, candy loaches, black emperor tetras, dwarf gouramis, rams, and golden wonder panchax is PH 7, GH14, KH 4 - ideally the KH remains stable in there and PH and GH go down just a bit. the tank stocked with plecs, rainbow gobys, female bettas, and cockatoo apistogrammas is less established. PH 7.4, GH 17, KH 7. In that one the PH would ideally go down below 7, KH down a little, and GH down a decent amount. Any suggestions to continue moving things in the right direction without using harsh chemicals and shocking the fish?

 

[GumYu]

do you have your own RO system? use a larger % of RO water.

 

[AZL]

do you have your own RO system? use a larger % of RO water.

Yes, I have upped the RO over time. I don't have my own system nor can I install one here due to lack of space and the way the plumbing is in the building but I was already getting barrels of it from the LFS for my marine tanks so just get extra now. I can't use more than 50% RO anyway as for weekly water changes for a 200 litre/50ish gallon and a 125 litre/33 gallon on top of the barrels of natural seawater for the two marine tanks haulage, cost, and space are all issues. As I understand it going over 50% RO is inadvisable in any case due to the need for re-mineralisation and the difficulty in getting that calibrated correctly. I do remineralise as needed but it's small amounts at the moment.

 

[AZL]

What are people's thoughts on peat in the filter?