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Re: Recommended plants for hard, alkaline water?
Dana J. Scott wrote:
>Can anyone recommend specific plants that do well in hard (100 to 250 ppm
>depending on how well my water softener is functioning - much harder if I
>run out of salt) water with an average pH of 8.0? Thanks.
My water is very hard, and my pH is very high, in the ranges you mention. I
don't use any water softener because of the NaCL (salt), although I'm going to
start trying to control hardness with bottled RO water. I have 2 watts per gal
for a 55 gallon tank. My substrate is Monterey beach sand only (finer than
typical aquarium gravel, courser than sand). I don't fertilize (except for my
fish and fish food), although I do add micronutrients (Kent's Freshwater Plant
supplement and/or Red Sea's AquaFlora). I do have a DIY yeast CO2 generator,
but the pH is so high, I can't get a good reading; it's probably not critical
with the amount of light I have.
Here's what my plants are doing:
Explosive growth:
Hygro. polysperma (tropic sun)
Cabomba caroliniana
Ambulia
hornwort
Healthy growth:
Dwarf Sagittaria
Vallisneria spiralis
Pennywort
Crypt. wendtii
Slow growth, but apparently healthy:
lobelia cardinalis
Amazon Swordplant
Pathetic, but surviving:
isoetes
anacharis (this one's supposed to be easy!)
unidentified Crypt. sp.
green hedge
Deaths:
None
- Anthony