Help before I kill again!

[JDCNY]

I have a 120 gallon tank with a 6 ft - 4 bulb Odyssea lighting system that was gifted to me when a friend made the switch to salt water. The tank has been up and running for several years and does great from a livestock perspective. Substrate is just gravel, though it's been in there for years. I have well water which is very hard and so I went with fish species that like that: I have a thriving Endler colony, cherry and blue dream shrimp, amano shrimp, bamboo shrimp, cory cats, kulhi loaches (not that they love hard water to be fair), and various snail species. All of which are doing great. The plants on the other hand...

I have one Anubia that I inherited with the tank that is doing great (it was even pearling last night) and a couple of anubia nana plants that managed to barely survive and now seem to be ok. I have a couple of very sickly java ferns that have been surviving or a year or so but only just. I also have some guppy grass which nearly all melted, then came back gang-busters, then melted again, and is now I think re-growing.  Red root floaters die quickly although salvinia minima seems to be doing OK. Hornwort struggled for a bit, made a huge mess, nearly died, grew back, made another huge mess, and finally died.  Java moss is nearly dying out, but there are a few stringy patches here and there that are hanging on. I even killed duckweed somehow!  I thought, OK, buy some Anubias and go with that, but the very nice looking ones I got from Co-op were dead within 2 days in my tank. I left the rhizomes in hoping they were converting and might somehow grow a new leaf, but they just turned to mush. 

Using Tetra 6-in-1 test strips...
My water out of the tap:
Nitrates: 0  Nitrites: 0  Hardness (GH): 150  Chlorine: 0  KH: 300  pH: 8.1

In the tank, the only difference is the Nitrates which are around 80ppm. I dosed with Easy Green and Seachem Potassium and clearly overdid it because I was suddenly getting a lot of algae growth and nitrates went through the roof. So I did a big water change and that brought it DOWN to 80ppm. I'm currently waiting on a calcium test kit to see whether my hardness is calcium or magnesium. 

Do I have any hope of growing healthy plants with this water? It seems like it's not very conducive to plant life. Or perhaps more likely, I'm just blaming my ineptitude on my tap.

Edited January 26, 2021 by JDCNY

[Fish Folk]

Great question! Good info. Hopefully a true plant nerm will sort things out. My questions:

(1) Just for clarity... is your Odyssea a reef light? Sounds like it’s _not_ but just checking.

(2) Given that your 120 is a nice big tank, is it possible that the PAR isn’t sufficient to throw light through the water to the bottom? 
 

(3) Do you have some added air flow in the tank? 

Your nitrates are plenty high. It’s possible other parameters are lacking something.... 

[FrozenFins]

FishFolk has some good points. Because your Nitrates are so high you are lacking some kind of nutrient in the water. I would suggest watching these videos, they may tell you what your missing in your water and how you can help it:

 

 

[JDCNY]

Fish Folk,
(1) Just for clarity... is your Odyssea a reef light? Sounds like it’s _not_ but just checking.
I _think_ it's a reef light. It's a T5-72 with 4 High Output 6500k 80w T5s and blue moonlight LEDs (which I think is just for coral??).

(2) Given that your 120 is a nice big tank, is it possible that the PAR isn’t sufficient to throw light through the water to the bottom? 
Sorry, too much of a n00b to know what PAR means. The guppy grass is floating, so it's definitely getting light and I was hoping the anubias and the java moss didn't need much light. I know if I leave the lights no too long, they started growing algae on the leaves, though these days the shrimp and snails make short work of that.

(3) Do you have some added air flow in the tank? 
I have two large airstones going at either end of the tank and a decent amount of surface agitation from my filter outflow so ... yes??

James Black, Thank you, I will check those out now!
And sorry, no Angels. LOL! To be totally honest, I always had angels growing up (my folks had a water softener), but I had no luck with them in this tank in a previous incarnation. I was under the assumption that they didn't like the hard water. Also, don't want them to snack on my endlers and shrimp!

[gardenman]

The java fern struggling is a surprise. I think of that as being as bulletproof as a plant can be assuming you don't bury the rhizome. (Even then it tends to live.) You seem to be going through a series of boom and bust cycles. I don't think lighting is the issue. Since the fish are doing well there's likely not a major water condition based issue. The fish tend to suffer before the plants.

The boom and bust growth pattern suggests that the plants thrive when a nutrient builds up, they quickly deplete it, then fade as it's not replaced. The big three nutrients in plants are nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium. High nitrates implies that the nitrogen levels are good. Phosphorous is more critical to flowering plants, so that's not as likely a problem. (Still possible, but less likely.) That pretty much leaves potassium as possibly being deficient. 

The fact that the plants boom then bust really makes me think that they get happy when they see a lot of a certain nutrient, gorge, gorge, gorge, on it, growing like mad, then find it all gone and can't sustain their growth and fade away. I don't think it would be a trace element. It could be but the effects of trace elements tends to be more subtle. This doesn't sound like it's subtle. And it doesn't affect the fish. If I was betting I'd say it was a potassium issue. It makes the most sense to me.  Good luck!

[JDCNY]

Thank you gardenman. It sounds like there may well be hope even though my pH, KH, and GH are really high if I can get my nutrients right. I think I probably over-reacted and tried too many things at once. I saw the co-op video on Old Tank Syndrome and immediately upped my water changes since I'd been mostly just topping off. I saw elsewhere in the forum that potassium may well be what my guppy grass was missing, so I started dosing that. I saw the co-op video on Easy Green so I started dosing that too. It was only then that I thought, "Hmm... maybe I should establish a baseline and do this a bit more scientifically so I have some clue as to what works and what doesn't."

Any other recommendations on plants that do ok with high pH, KH, and GH? 

[Kelly S]

I'm just chiming in to say you're not alone. 2 of my first plants were java fern and wisteria, and I managed to kill both. Oh, and frogbit, water lettuce, and salvinia. Anubias seems to do well in my hard water too, but so does java moss. I have pin holes in some of my anubias leaves so I'm wondering about potassium (not because I know anything, but because I've been watching Cory and Irene's videos). But TBH I got distracted with life and wasn't testing water or fertilizing regularly for a while. When I finally tested, I had zero nitrates and decided maybe I should be more mindful about my plants' nutrition! Oops. 

All this to say, I wish you luck and I love your topic title. 

[Sharon- fishandfloral]

I started my first planted tanks 7 months ago, so I’m pretty new as well. My first attempt, the fish ate or destroyed every single plant, so I set up 2 new tanks that don’t have herbivores in them and tried again. 

Plants are really a learning experience. Don’t feel bad when it takes a few attempts to get it right. In our hard water, crypts, pogostemon, java fern, moss and dwarf lily seem to do well. I use Easy Green, root tabs, and just started using Easy Carbon to address an algae issue.

[Wes L.]

I feel your pain. I also live where our water is hard 15dGH, and according to the info in the API hardness test kits, it says planted tanks should be between 2dGH and 6dGH, so my water is substantially over what is recommended for planted tanks. However, all is not lost. I have found hygrophilas and alternantheras and java moss still grow exceptionally well in hard water. And there are plenty of different types of hygrophila and alternanthera to choose from.

[Andy's Fish Den]

On 1/26/2021 at 10:44 AM, JDCNY said:

Fish Folk,
(1) Just for clarity... is your Odyssea a reef light? Sounds like it’s _not_ but just checking.
I _think_ it's a reef light. It's a T5-72 with 4 High Output 6500k 80w T5s and blue moonlight LEDs (which I think is just for coral??).

If the bulbs are labeled 6500K they aren't for reef tanks. Reef tanks typically use bulbs in the 10000-14000K range, and have a blue look to them, as well as actinic bulbs which is definitely a blue color bulb. Blue moonlight LED are just decoration, mainly just so you can see in the tank at night. 

[JDCNY]

1 hour ago, Andy's Fish Den said:

If the bulbs are labeled 6500K they aren't for reef tanks. Reef tanks typically use bulbs in the 10000-14000K range, and have a blue look to them, as well as actinic bulbs which is definitely a blue color bulb. Blue moonlight LED are just decoration, mainly just so you can see in the tank at night. 

Thank you, Andy! I've been wondering about that. 

[Tanked]

On 1/26/2021 at 1:35 PM, Kelly S said:

I have pin holes in some of my anubias leaves so I'm wondering about potassium (not because I know anything, but because I've been watching Cory and Irene's videos).

My pin-holed Anubias seemed to want something that the easy green wasn't providing. A root tab with a slightly higher potassium content seems to have eliminated the problem.

[Cory]

The key here is balance. Seems we are kinda going from one extreme to another. IT will take time for plants to repair missing nutrients. 20ppm of easy green should sustain your plants easily.

Virtually every just says I have fertilizer and plants, what do? I have deficiencies. You need to make a plan, stem plants and floating plants consume nutrients at like 10x speed of an anubias. So you can have what anubias wants in the water but it's gobbled up.

How this works in real life. You buy 2 pizzas, and a 2 liter of soda for a family. The kids go ham on the soda and knock it over spilling it all out. The other adults have pizza but nothing to drink. The adults are your anubias essentially.  To solve this problem, we get sippy cups, and portion out the soda.

In our home aquarium this may mean we are dosing nutrients several times a week so that one plant doesn't just consume it all in one day.

Once damage is done to a plant it doesn't repair bad leaves, instead the new ones that grow will be good. So you can have a java fern or anubias with 10 bad leaves, those are going to be bad forever and it may take 10 weeks to grow 10 good looking leaves. So to change to a "good looking" tank it may take months to be visually appealing. This happens in nature as well, a drought causes plants to die back. Then next year they look better. In our aquarium we expect results much faster.

[JDCNY]

On 1/30/2021 at 1:26 PM, Cory said:

Once damage is done to a plant it doesn't repair bad leaves, instead the new ones that grow will be good. So you can have a java fern or anubias with 10 bad leaves, those are going to be bad forever and it may take 10 weeks to grow 10 good looking leaves. So to change to a "good looking" tank it may take months to be visually appealing. This happens in nature as well, a drought causes plants to die back. Then next year they look better. In our aquarium we expect results much faster.

I've heard that it's a good idea to trim off the bad leaves so the plant doesn't have to waste resources on them. I imagine that's only assuming that there are at least 1 or 2 good leaves to provide photosynthesis. If all the leaves are bad, I shouldn't cut them all off, right? Are bad leaves better than no leaves? 

[gardenman]

In general with plants, leaves are power plants. As long as they're green and alive they are giving the plant more energy. In an odd quirk, at least with terrestrial plants I can't say for sure about aquatic plants, even seemingly dead leaves/stems that aren't actively decaying can provide resources to the living plant. A lot of perennial plants store food in the form of carbohydrates in the seemingly dead plant stems and then draw on that food stored in those stems over the winter/non-growing season. A lot of gardeners cut everything back to the ground after the first frost, but doing so can take away that stored energy the plant may need over the winter.

[JDCNY]

Since it's been two weeks I wanted to report back. Basically, my plants are looking MUCH healthier. My Anubias are loving it and have all grown new leaves. The guppy grass has stopped dying back and is putting out roots and starting to grow again. The java ferns seem to be coming back as well though they were pretty sad so it may take a bit to know for sure. They did have quite a few little plantlets (a sign of stress I've learned) that I have taken and am trying to propagate in a small 5 gallon that I've set up to experiment and hopefully learn. I was somewhat shocked to learn that some plants that I had planted in the back of my tank over a year ago that I thought had completely died out have now started growing. It was so long ago that I don't remember what they are, but I'm thinking either vals or amazon swords.

To recap what I've been doing:

1. large water change weekly (roughly 1/3) to turn around old tank syndrome since I'd been basically just topping off forever. (I figure I'll drop this down to bi-weekly at some point, but everybody seems to like the fresh water so I'm going with it for now.)
2. 6 pumps of Easy Green after the water change. 
3. 1 pump of Easy Green each day when not doing a water change. Thought here being to spread out the dosing so that the slower growing plants don't get outcompeted by the fast-growing ones.
4. 1 capful of Seachem Potassium after each water change and 1 capful mid-week.

[Kelly S]

Thanks for the update; glad it's going well!