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Stunted plants in Hard water ?

eminor

eminor

Member
Joined
5 Feb 2021
Messages
791
Location
France
Hello, since a long time I use tap water in the aquarium, I have a crazy difficulty to make grow certain species, I remember that when I used fresh water the plants grew much more easily, with hard water the plants are stunted, thing which never happened in fresh water. I wonder if it is me the problem or the tap water knowing that I followed all the advice, spray bar, EI, co2 has more than 30 ppm, the distribution is good and stable I think (2500 liters/h in 54 liters tank accross all the tank), the plant hygrophila pinnatifada refuses to grow, in soft water I did not have this problem, is it really harder to grow plants in hard water or it is just an illusion ? thx

tap water :
GH : 17
KH : 11
 
eminor said:
is it really harder to grow plants in hard water or it is just an illusion ?
Click to expand...
Yes it's an illusion, you are starting down the rabbit hole of wasting your time and money on something that is not really important. Most plants and fish don't really care about water hardness. Plants make use of what they have available.

I would suggest poor CO2 levels and CO2 distribution in your tank, we need more details for comment properly. 99.999% of plant issues are poor CO2 levels and distribution for the amount of light you are supplying. Oh and also "inventing" your own version of EI by missing something out "cos its in my water !!" and getting plant health issues.

See here for some very nice specimens of plants growing in hard water with no issues.

Hard Water and phosphate troubles -HELP PLEASE-

I'll try to make this quick. 76 gallon bowfront Filtered (Fluval 405), CO2 injected, recommended flow rate achieved with a hydor circulating pump. CO2 at approx 30 ppm, dosing EI method. Pretty heavily planted. PH pretty steady at 6.8 ish to 7.1 ish. FIRST: My GH is 23 and my KH is 26, I've...
www.ukaps.org
 
ian_m said:
Yes it's an illusion, you are starting down the rabbit hole of wasting your time and money on something that is not really important. Most plants and fish don't really care about water hardness. Plants make use of what they have available.

I would suggest poor CO2 levels and CO2 distribution in your tank, we need more details for comment properly. 99.999% of plant issues are poor CO2 levels and distribution for the amount of light you are supplying. Oh and also "inventing" your own version of EI by missing something out "cos its in my water !!" and getting plant health issues.

See here for some very nice specimens of plants growing in hard water with no issues.

Hard Water and phosphate troubles -HELP PLEASE-

I'll try to make this quick. 76 gallon bowfront Filtered (Fluval 405), CO2 injected, recommended flow rate achieved with a hydor circulating pump. CO2 at approx 30 ppm, dosing EI method. Pretty heavily planted. PH pretty steady at 6.8 ish to 7.1 ish. FIRST: My GH is 23 and my KH is 26, I've...
www.ukaps.org
Click to expand...

I use the EI dosage in the tutorial made by Ceg i think adapted to my 15 gallon tank, i do not add calcium cause there is really a lot in it

i use two pump one in the inlet and the one in the canister filter rated 1500 and 800 l/h, crossbar is along the tank. the spray bar have 25 holes, there is 8 allowed.

I use one t5ho at 20-25cm over the top (54liters tank)

water.png
 
As far as l know all the display tanks at ADA gallery and Green Aqua use soft water but Aquarium Gardens displays use hard water as does George Farmers studio aquariums . Sort of tells us something
 
PARAGUAY said:
As far as l know all the display tanks at ADA gallery and Green Aqua use soft water but Aquarium Gardens displays use hard water as does George Farmers studio aquariums . Sort of tells us something
Click to expand...

all beautiful tanks, maybe i still have not enough experiences, i remember soft water was easier but i take the blue pill by thinking that i think
 
eminor said:
all beautiful tanks, maybe i still have not enough experiences, i remember soft water was easier but i take the blue pill by thinking that i think
Click to expand...

dsc00625-08-oct-21-jpg.jpg


If you want to gain experience, may I suggest that apart from your high tech CO2/ EI tank, you might want to have a small 'low tech' fish bowl without injected CO2 where you can learn and gain experience. Frankly, I find managing my low tech tank "easier" than high light/high tech/CO2 injected tanks.

This is a photo of my mini plastic desktop/ shrimp breeding tank with no CO2 and lighting by my table lamp. I dose much less than EI, and don't add "liquid carbon"

In Low tech, I can grow Rotala Blood Red, Syngonanthus Macrocaulon, Rotala Wallichi (very green in low tech though), etc, no problem. More important is that my Cherry Shrimp seem happy and are breeding :)

For high tech even with CO2, I am finding the following a challenge: Ludwigia Senegelansis, Ludwigia Sphaerocarpa, Ammania Pedicatella so I just have to keep at it until I succeed. I know there's no magic bullet, so I guess I have to master the basics.
 
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erwin123 said:
dsc00625-08-oct-21-jpg.jpg


If you want to gain experience, may I suggest that apart from your high tech CO2/ EI tank, you might want to have a small 'low tech' fish bowl without injected CO2 where you can learn and gain experience. Frankly, I find managing my low tech tank "easier" than high light/high tech/CO2 injected tanks.

This is a photo of my mini plastic desktop/ shrimp breeding tank with no CO2 and lighting by my table lamp. I dose much less than EI, and don't add "liquid carbon"

I can grow Rotala Blood Red, Syngonanthus Macrocaulon, Rotala Wallichi, etc, no problem. More important is that my Cherry Shrimp seem happy and are breeding :)
Click to expand...
yes i think it's a good idea, what kind of rotala is that ? also i think you use soft water with synhonanthus right ?

rotala.png
 
erwin123 said:
Wow well spotted... that is the very low light / low tech form of Rotala H'ra... I had just chucked a couple of stems in there and they converted from their high tech form to this form.
Click to expand...
i have some, they looks good actually, only two plants are stunted in my tank, one stem of the pogostemon stellata and the rotala's, i have 15 others species that are really in good shape
 
eminor said:
Hello, since a long time I use tap water in the aquarium, I have a crazy difficulty to make grow certain species, I remember that when I used fresh water the plants grew much more easily, with hard water the plants are stunted, thing which never happened in fresh water. I wonder if it is me the problem or the tap water knowing that I followed all the advice, spray bar, EI, co2 has more than 30 ppm, the distribution is good and stable I think (2500 liters/h in 54 liters tank accross all the tank), the plant hygrophila pinnatifada refuses to grow, in soft water I did not have this problem, is it really harder to grow plants in hard water or it is just an illusion ? thx

tap water :
GH : 17
KH : 11
Click to expand...
If only certain species are stunted but others grow well then we cannot make the argument that "all" plants are hard to grow in hard water. I also don't think that you necessarily need to resort to low tech just because two species are not growing in the high tech tank. Why would these two species be any easier to grow in a low tech tank filled with hard water? I suggest we abandon this reasoning and instead try to focus on learning how to have success with our high tech first.
Do you imagine that all low tech tanks look as nice as erwin123's tank shown above? It takes just as much skill and learning to grow plants in low tech as it does in high tech.

For reference, the images shown in the EI tutorial was not a soft water tank. The GH was more than 26 and the KH was more than 20. The water was more comparable to Lake Malawi and much less comparable to the Rio Negro. There were over 70 different species in that tank and none of them gave me any trouble.

Here is Pogostemon stelleta in that tank. Think about how large the rosettes are compared to the size of the fish, which are perhaps 4-5cm:
8394082679_00b443600e_c.jpg


The plant grew so large and so quickly that it became a nuisance and started smothering the rest of the plants in the tank.
This is what P. stelleta looks like with maximum CO2 and maximum nutrition:

8395193064_114f258a1e_c.jpg



So this should put to rest any doubt regarding P. stellata in hard water.
If you have trouble growing P. stelleta then it means you have a fundamental problem in the tank, and this problem has nothing to do with hard water. As mentioned by Ian_M you must always suspect a CO2 fault when you have trouble in a tank. Some day you will truly believe this and when you do it will make you a better plant grower.
All of us have had difficulty and all of us had ignored the truth, then, wasted time and energy investigating false paths.
Have you done the pH profile and have you been able to drop the pH by 1 unit by lights on?

What you can also do is to move the plants to another location in the tank to see if they perform better at the alternate locations. You can also float the stellata at the water's surface for a few weeks. Sometimes this helps the plant to get started, and then when you see new growth you can then re-plant it.

Having 30ppm in the water column really means nothing because 90% of what we inject escapes the tank at the top. This is one of the reasons hobbyists often do not recognize that CO2 is at fault and they instead pursue other factors.

Cheers,
 
ceg4048 said:
If only certain species are stunted but others grow well then we cannot make the argument that "all" plants are hard to grow in hard water. I also don't think that you necessarily need to resort to low tech just because two species are not growing in the high tech tank. Why would these two species be any easier to grow in a low tech tank filled with hard water? I suggest we abandon this reasoning and instead try to focus on learning how to have success with our high tech first.
Do you imagine that all low tech tanks look as nice as erwin123's tank shown above? It takes just as much skill and learning to grow plants in low tech as it does in high tech.

For reference, the images shown in the EI tutorial was not a soft water tank. The GH was more than 26 and the KH was more than 20. The water was more comparable to Lake Malawi and much less comparable to the Rio Negro. There were over 70 different species in that tank and none of them gave me any trouble.

Here is Pogostemon stelleta in that tank. Think about how large the rosettes are compared to the size of the fish, which are perhaps 4-5cm:
8394082679_00b443600e_c.jpg


The plant grew so large and so quickly that it became a nuisance and started smothering the rest of the plants in the tank.
This is what P. stelleta looks like with maximum CO2 and maximum nutrition:

8395193064_114f258a1e_c.jpg



So this should put to rest any doubt regarding P. stellata in hard water.
If you have trouble growing P. stelleta then it means you have a fundamental problem in the tank, and this problem has nothing to do with hard water. As mentioned by Ian_M you must always suspect a CO2 fault when you have trouble in a tank. Some day you will truly believe this and when you do it will make you a better plant grower.
All of us have had difficulty and all of us had ignored the truth, then, wasted time and energy investigating false paths.
Have you done the pH profile and have you been able to drop the pH by 1 unit by lights on?

What you can also do is to move the plants to another location in the tank to see if they perform better at the alternate locations. You can also float the stellata at the water's surface for a few weeks. Sometimes this helps the plant to get started, and then when you see new growth you can then re-plant it.

Having 30ppm in the water column really means nothing because 90% of what we inject escapes the tank at the top. This is one of the reasons hobbyists often do not recognize that CO2 is at fault and they instead pursue other factors.

Cheers,
Click to expand...
Yes, i made a video, as you can see other plants seems doing great, myrriophyllum red stem seems to grow but the bottom leaves become brown, cabomba furcata is really hard for me. stellata seems to be fine now, rotala is stunted, drop checker is lime green at light start. i will do a ph profile soon, the filter release so much co2, i lowered the spray bar since that there is co2 burp.

ceratopteris thalictroides seems to be the plant that's having the funniest time in there, growing like 10-15cm a week, i use EI as i said, i made some progress thought, I can't put more co2, fish goes to the top otherwise, i learned from you that bubbles means not much, be there is bubbles on every plant after 1 hours light on, sorry about my english

also as you can see there is 6 holes of spray bar holes uncovered, i have 1500l/h in the inlet, 800l/h inside the filter, if i let every holes free, is will be heavenly delivered across the tank but the velocity will be weak ? i mean that maybe some plant in the back won't be getting much flow ?

video
 
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Hi more information is needed to help!

Please read the guidelines for plant help!

Dear Member Please give as many details as possible regarding your aquarium set-up, when requiring advice/help! The above will be posted at the start of each help request. Why do we ask these questions? It will reduce the member posting multiple times, plus adviser's don't need to scroll...
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Myrriophyllum red stem seems to grow but the bottom leaves become brown....Diatoms or old emersed growth?
Cabomba furcata is really hard for me.....a diffuclt plant for many!
Rotala is stunted.....an Image of a stem of the Rotala would be helpful.
hoggie
 
foxfish said:
Hi eminor, I can see a big power head in the corner, is that powering the spray bar or is it connected to something else ?
There seems to be lots of big bubbles in the tank, how are you supplying the C02, does it go into an in line diffuser?
Click to expand...
the power head push the water though the inlet of the canister filter, there is another impeller inside the canister that push though the spray bar, the co2 diffuser is near the inlet so the canister is the reactor
 
Ah ok so you have two pumps in line to push one flow of water?
Have you tried to switch off one pump and see if it still works because one pump pushing another pump it not going to work very well.
If you are injecting the C02 into a canister and still getting all those bubbles then something is not working very well, not only that but the bubbles look quite large!
Normally if you flow the C02 through a canister there should not be any bubbles visible.
It could be the two pumps are cavitating and forming oxygen bubbles .
 
foxfish said:
Ah ok so you have two pumps in line to push one flow of water?
Have you tried to switch off one pump and see if it still works because one pump pushing another pump it not going to work very well.
If you are injecting the C02 into a canister and still getting all those bubbles then something is not working very well, not only that but the bubbles look quite large!
Normally if you flow the C02 through a canister there should not be any bubbles visible.
It could be the two pumps are cavitating and forming oxygen bubbles .
Click to expand...
unforunatly, i can't switch because the pump must be in water, and there is only one side for tubing

by reducing the height of the spray bar, there is less surface agitation but huge change in co2, plants are full of bubbles, thousands in there
 
i fixed it, the spray bar was at 2.5cm but i think the flow was too high and the surface agitation was insane, so i placed the bar 3.5-5cm from the top so less surface agitation, the levels are now perfect, no more BBA, tons of bubbles, insane new growth, no stunted plant anymore, even the cabomba furcata make new pink leaves. No more algae on the glass =)

expert on this forum were right, CO2 is the key
 
I think the best advice you could get right now is to slow down - in some species you won’t notice massive leaps in health from a tweak you made a month previous, these things invariably take time.

Think of it like this, you’re run down and have been eating badly until you’re nutrient deficient. You change your meals and get your 5 a day. You aren’t instantly cured, you have to repair the damage and build up levels before you notice changes.
Same thing is doing some push-ups isn’t going to turn you into the rock by morning.

Tweak the flow and wait, tweak the co2 and wait, increase water changes and wait. That’s as much as 2 months waiting before you could see “perfect” growth forms.

“Only bad things happen fast in aquariums”.
 
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