Hard Water Plants

[iAerospace]

Hey all!

I’m sure this subject is covered well and buried in this forum somewhere so forgive me for my trespasses of asking again.

I have very hard water, 8.0 ph and everything maxes out the test strips as far as minerals. I can’t find good city water info online regarding magnesium or anything too specific. 

I’m trying new plants right now and they are struggling, but they are a week or two placed, so possibly melting. I have Ludwigia that at this point are little vassals of mushy horror. Bottom half of their stems seem solid though, should I just cut off the death? Jungle val that seems to be browning from the bottom and losing it’s long slendies (sorry). Creeping rush that seems alright, some browning. Small Moneywort that seems mostly good besides leaf die off. Dosing ferts twice a week, potassium, excel which might be hurting the vals, significant root tabs to start them off, aquasoil. 

I used to have Java ferns but they slowly withered. Water spangles died quickly when I got those. Some ferns holding on in a spare 10 gal. However, any Anubias I use does well, maybe a little slow but still very well. Do you guys think that is indicative of a certain deficiency? I don’t have any fish in there currently as I’m letting it balance. Plant overhaul brought in plenty of debris and spiked my cycle a little so there’s fuel there too.

 

From my understanding it has a lot to do with saturation, but my local pet store has some plants, including jungle Val that seem fine? Maybe a little thin on leaves. The woman I talked to said she just sometimes adds flourish when she thinks they look a little down lol it’s a 50 gal with one betta in there so I’m not sure what to tell you about that.

 

Thanks for reading! Phone won’t let me add pictures so it turned into more writing.

[jwcarlson]

I've had issues with keeping nitrates in my tanks, so that's been a lot of my struggles with plants in hard water.  However, plants that have done well in my inexpert hands are dwarf water lettuce, guppy grass, anubias, pogostemmon stellatis octopus (no clue on spelling) and crypts (basically not dying, but not really necessarily growing in a lot of cases).  But the last bit I have been focusing on getting root tabs in at regular intervals and keeping my nitrates higher.  Cutting back on water changes and dosing easy green.

That's helped a lot, but even then, a lot of plants just seem slow for me.  I have some random assortment of vals that seem to spread, but never really get very tall.  Which is OK, it's just kind of frustrating.  

[iAerospace]

I’ll try some those! I was thinking about just buying some out of that stores 50 and seeing if it’s just me (overpriced though). I’d like to get some tall plants to put in the back corners, maybe I’ll have to get creative or have some nice fake ones. 

[JettsPapa]

My hardness isn't off the charts, but it's pretty high, and my water is 8.2 pH.  I'd give the plants more time, especially the vallisneria.  I have corkscrew val and it gets around 3' tall in my 65 gallon tank (it reaches the top and then lays over a foot or so).

Some of these were mentioned above, but hornwort, Brazilina pennywort, moneyworth, guppy grass, water wisteria, water sprite, pearl weed, and crypts are some plants that have done well for me, crypts especially.  Duck weed did well too, until I found and killed all of it (I hope; it's only been a few months since I last saw some).

[jwcarlson]

I forgot to mention hornwort and duckweed above, I would highly suggest not opening the duckweed box of horrors, though.  I have been without duckweed for months now... until yesterday I found like 4-5 pieces in the previously infested tank.  Thankfully it's just a little bit.  I still think there's some suck in the coarse filter pads and eventually it works its way out or produces a baby that breaks off.

I've had terrible luck with water sprite for some reason!  I will say if I leave it floating it seems a bit better.  

 

@iAerospace PSO is a good, tall plant.  And easy to propagate once you get it going.

 

I don't know what this plant is and I have no good pictures of it.  This is from quite some time ago.  I've been snipping it and replanting it and creating a little forest of it.  I like the way it looks.  It's done pretty well in hard water as well.

 

[MattyM]

Do you dose Excel b/c of algae? We have some liquid rock here in Chicago and my vals do great, and when I use excel it's generally spot treating vs a full dose. If anything I use 1/2 dose max per the instructions. 

Crypts, annubias, Pogostemon Stellatus Octopus, Dwarf Sagittaria, vals have done well for me, with or without CO2. 

What's your lighting situation? 

[iAerospace]

I only have the Excel because it came with as a pack of the flourish I was recommended. I just put small amounts in since I don’t run any Co2 and it’s just sitting there. I only just picked up on the info of Val’s being sensitive to it, no intentions of continuing. I have almost no algae, even when I tried.

 

As for lighting I have a fluval that fits the tank. I’ve been experimenting with the light level. It’s a little lower than medium right now. 

[Rube_Goldfish]

@Seattle_Aquarist gives a list of plant recommendations for hard water in this thread:

[knee]

Copied this from a planted forum that I'm in. This topic has been talked about for years in the planted community and hopefully this helps a bit.

 

Average fish/plants, maybe a KH of 3-4, GH of 4-8.
GH is not very important as long as you have some, Ca/Mg are plant nutrients......

KH is not and thus not particularly dependent for plant growth.
Although some plants will use KH as a carbon source, but they still have some, perhaps limited CO2, so even without it, they can grow, just not as fast if you have low CO2.
 

GH or General Hardness
This is essentially a measure of the calcium (CaSO4, Gypsum) and magnesium (MaSO4, Epsom Salts) levels in your water. Most tap water will contain a degree or two of GH already (or in some areas it may contain larger amounts) and is easily measured with a water test kit for KH/GH (often sold as a pack together in your local fish shop LFS). If your using rain water or RO/DM (Reverse Osmosis/De-mineralised) water then your GH will be very low/nothing especially in the case of RO/DM as this process effectively strips out all minerals and metals leaving you with "pure water". This however has to be re-constituted to be of any real use in sustaining life.

- Effect of low GH on Plants.
A Magnesium deficiency can be identified by leaves with darker veins while the surrounding leaf tissue is lighter in color.
A Calcium deficiency can be identified by leaves with small twisted pale new growth. (This could also be caused by an over dose of Potassium (K) or Magnesium (Mg))

KH or Carbonate Hardness
Carbonate hardness or carbonate alkalinity is a measure of the alkalinity of water caused by the presence of carbonate (CO32-) and bicarbonate (HCO3-) anions. It is usually expressed either as parts per million (ppm or mg/L), or in degrees KH (from the German "Karbonathärte"). One German degree of carbonate hardness (dKH) corresponds to the carbonate and bicarbonate ions found in a solution of approximately 17.848 milligrams of calcium carbonate (CaCO3) per litre of water (17.848 ppm). - Wikipedia answer

- Effect of Low KH on Plants
KH effects the PH buffering ability of your water. The optimal/ideal PH for plant growth is said to be 6. The PH value influences your plants ability to take up nutrients. So if your water has a low/high KH your plants may indirectly suffer because of not being able to absorb the available nutrients. The PH/KH value can be adjusted UP easily by using Sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3, Baking Soda), this only has an affect on your KH and not your GH. It's more difficult to lower you PH level, it can be done by using a reverse osmosis filter, it effectively resets your water so you can start again. Plants are quite flexible to the PH range (with in reason) most doing reasonable well with a PH of 6-7. Some species requiring softer water and some harder.

[PineSong]

Yes, cut off dead parts of plants. In general, cutting back plants when you add them to your tank is helpful because it allows the root structure to develop without so much foliage competing for the nutrients. 

I have hard water and whether it's that or something else I've struggled with my stem plants.

I'm now supplementing my ferts (Easy Green 2x week) with Flourish Potassium once a week for another reason, and am trying some stems again to see if that will help, but in the meantime...the plants that have done well for me in my tanks include:

amazon swords, frogbit, corkscrew valisneria, dwarf sagittaria, anubia, dwarf lilies, guppy grass (najas), aponogeton ulvacious and aponogeton boivinanus, anubias. I also have an echinodorus vesuvius which has stayed alive and has looked perfect every day but has not reproduced yet. I haven't been targeting it with roottabs or anything so I may do that to try to promote babies.

I just started with crypts in the past few months; crypt lucens and wendtii red went into my tank and did not melt back and so far they look great, the wendtii red has grown quite a bit so far.