SambaTime

For water changes on my 5 gallon I put a few tablespoons of leftover stratum in the bottom of some 1 gallon water jugs. This has worked well for the small quantity of water, so far the jugs have gone through about 2 months of use with tap water and the buffering capacity is still holding in them. (somewhere around 8-12 gallons of water, I forgot to keep count lol) From others posts I've read on various forums people say you can probably expect around 6-12 months of buffering from the substrate using straight tap water. (ultimately depends on how much KH is in your tap water) Using water already stripped of the KH should give you 1-2 years.

So far in my experience it has not leached any ammonia in the 6 days that it's been in my new tank. My tap water has a ph of 8-8.4 and a Kh of 4, the substrate lowered the ph to 6.4-6.6 range and kh to 0 within 24-48 hours. My main concern using it with my tap water is that water changes will cause ph swings in the tank if I don't drip change it, and it will reduce the buffering capacity of the substrate faster. I've seen a lot of people recommend using RO water to avoid this. Letting the tap water set out overnight can lower the ph some as well as putting driftwood in with it. You could also probably use the stratum itself in a bucket to lower the tap ph but I'm not sure how cost effective that would be.