Plants for mineral depleted water

[Matthew Clark]

I am currently using pure RO water revitalized with Kent RO Right in my apisto tanks. Although it seems to be a good receipe for apistos, the same has not hel true for plants. Val never really caught on, my crypts were doing great for a little bit but now have started to "melt," Ludwigia died(although I have heard this is a very demanding plant, so it probably just died due to my lack of a green thumb). Onion plant is really the only plant doing anything(that and algae- <g>). All tanks have at least 2w/gallon lighting. Not fertilized very often, although I should probably start doing this due to low nutrient levels. If I did it would be with a liquid iron treatment and if there is anything I can put in the substrate as an afterthought(nothing now). No CO2. Any ideas on plants that tolerate water that is VERY mineral depleted?


Matthew Clark

 

[Cichlids1]

In a lot of my extremely softwater setups I use plants like aponogeton, chain swords (e. tennellus), regular amazon swords, and bacopa without any major difficulties. I don't fertilize that often, but I do have a tendency to overfeed and crowd some tanks. I've sure the added nitrogen created by my bad housekeeping helps the plants a bit.

Here is a picture of a 15g, pure RO tank with nothing more than a shoplight over top. No CO2, ferts, special substrate, etc. The only thing different between the first and second picture is about 3/4th of the chain swords have been removed. Please excuse the bad photographer...still memorizing tip and tricks from DigitalBoy and Max's webpages

http://www.iwaynet.net/~ken1/fish_pics/Tank_Pics/15g_Transvestitus_before.JPG

http://www.iwaynet.net/~ken1/fish_pics/Tank_Pics/15g_Transvestitus_after.JPG

 

[aspen]

matthew, imo, amazon plants are made to grow in water that is devoid of minerals, provided that you give them a good fert, and co2 addition makes them go wild. try a diy set-up and you will see the difference. co2 adds carbon in a readily accepted source. your light is good, co2 is the next thing to get your plants growing like crazy.

i use tropica master gro, and with red plants an iron supplement is nice. clay balls shoved under the roots will be fine. no need for fancy substrates imo. if you add the missing nutrients, they will suck the extra phosphorous and nitrogen right out of the water.

rick

 

[Matthew Clark]

Thanks!

 

[mordor]

Strange I got CO2 device, lots of light, do some fertilazing but still Chain Swords are melting in my tanks. Any ideas?

 

[cmoreash]

Hey mordor, at my LFS they have a 80 discus tank, complete with cO2 injection and loads of plants. They have a lot of very healthy chain swords in the tank. I asked the guy who took care of the tank what requirements the chain swords need, and he said they need high lighting, and soft water. I am guessing cO2 and fertilizer help too a lot. The tank has only Onyx sand for substrate. All the plants are VERY healthy. He told me that when chain swords are healthier, they aren't as tall, and the plumage spreads out more. The water temp. was around 86F I believe.

You could always get dwarf sags. too, they look very similar, and from my experience, they are really easy to keep.

 

[aspen]

what exactly is happening when you try chain swords? you say they are melting? does that mean that the plants start dying from the outside? i would think that this means that the corona usn't showing. pull them out just a little but, but sometimes you have to wait a week or 2, till their tiny roots have established themselves a bit.

the other thing is, you have to make sure that their leaves are not covered in algae, this is quite common. the new leaves should be red, after they have grown in, not light green (iron deficiency) or brown, (corona or root problem).

if you ensure they are provided the right conditions and nutrients, then you have to make sure they can accept them. remember aquatic plants grow like weeds under the right condidions. look carefully, esp at the smaller plants, to find out what could be making them unable to accept these nutrients and light.

try an iron enriched root tab, or clay balls.

rick

 

[Eva32181]

From what I have gathered lurking on the APD, this is what I think may be going on:

when you have high light and high CO2, plants grow very quickly. Thus, they use up minerals more quickly, and have a higher demand for ferts than do plants in low-light tanks. So the combination of high light, CO2, and minerally depleted water is doubly bad for your plants.

So what would I reccommend? Look into puttinig together some good ferts, like PMDD. The krib has a lot of info there. I use Seachem's flourish and iron because I'm too lazy to do anything more complicated :wink: , but in your case you may need more than just that.

Good luck

 

[cmoreash]

yea, I use Seachem's liquid iron, liquid carbon source, and fertilizer, and my plants are doing awesome in my 20 gallon tank. No cO2, no special substrate, and 35 watts of light from 2 aquaglo bulbs. I just started putting iron in my 30 gallon tank, and I am hoping it will perk up my amazon swords, they haven't grown much in the last month.

 

[mordor]

You might be right I got lots of light 4W per galon and CO2 from Carbo Plus but I am do not use much fertilizer. I added some Seachem tabs into substrate near these chain swords to see what happen. In other thank with no CO2, 1W/G light one of chains start showing new leaves. Also I am using gravel instead of sand in both tanks but in second tank it's smaller gravel than in first.

 

[aspen]

i have been corrected about chain swords, imo, the most common type has red leaves, but there are at least 5 types of chain swords, and they will all grow in slightly differently. i only have exp with the one with the red leaves, though, the one grown and supplied by tropica. also, there seems to be some descrepancy about how many types there are, and their naming.

wow, 4 wpg. he he, the fish must all have sun tans!

normally people will add a liquid all purpose fert, and monitor iron levels only, since this is the easiest mineral to test for, and this keeps people somewhat in line as to how much fert their plants need. but there is a good chart on the krib-

http://www.thekrib.com/Plants/Fertilizer/nutrient-deficiency.html

but i would highly suggest anyone who wants all of the basics about growing plants covered, read all you can on this very informative site!

usually we stick a light on the tank, and decide from there what our growth rate will be, since this is the factor that we have least control over, after the tank is set up. imo, all other factors, like co2 levels and fert addition should be in balance with the light levels selected. imo in a new tank, it pays to keep the co2 levels high, and the fert levels low, and the algae will not bloom so badly, but the plants will be a little less full than you would expect. as the tank 'grows in' then increase fert levels to the point where the plants are still eating everything in sight, with no extra.

rick

(we will likely lose most of our planted tank posters for a while, he he. lots of GREAT reading on the krib)

 

[davemill]

I am currently using pure RO water revitalized with Kent RO Right in my apisto tanks. Although it seems to be a good receipe for apistos, the same has not hel true for plants.

Here's my tank, which has never seen a drop of tap water. Pure RO, plus 1 teaspoon of RO Right per 10 gallons changed water and a KH of 2:

http://www.tactics.com/d/fish

Of course, I also have 3+ watts per gallon of compact flourescent lighting, CO2 injection, Flourite gravel and daily fertilization...

 

[farm41]

Hi davemill,

Great looking tanks, I didn't know that could be done with straight RO.

Are you having any Ph swings with the co2 injection and a Kh of only 2?

 

[davemill]

Are you having any Ph swings with the co2 injection and a Kh of only 2?

The short answer is, not if you run the CO2 24 hrs/day. My pH is 6.4-6.6 all week between water changes. which refresh KH consumed by nitrification. I recently posted a detailed discussion to this on rec.aquaria.freshwater.plants. Look here for the thread

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&th=93f05757c0409d18&rnum=1

 

[Neil]

davemill,

WELCOME TO THE FORUM

Dave,
Interesting information! And you have a beautiful tank. I peeked at your website. Suprising lack of a Dwarf Cichlids species though . But those pearlscales are very nice showpieces in a tank that takes alot of attention away from the fish because of the aquascaping. Nicely done.
Neil

 

[davemill]

Neil,

Thanks for the compliments. I ended up at your site because I am considering one more pair of showcase fish in that tank, and Rams or another Apisto look like winners.

Any recommendations? I'm looking for a community- and plant-friendly SOUTH AMERICAN dwarf cichlid with interesting behavior. My water is soft and slightly acidic.

Thanks!

 

[aspen]

rams are my favourite dwarf. you won't be disappointed. but the list is VERY long.

rick

 

[jowens]

Are you having any Ph swings with the co2 injection and a Kh of only 2?

It's my understanding that pH swings due to injecting CO2 with a low kH are a myth. The relationship between pH, CO2, and kH is in fact a fixed logorythm - like a math equation - so "swings" won't occur as long as long as your kH and CO2 stay constant. And if those factors don't stay constant, the swings will be no more dramatic at 2 kH then they would be at 5 kH or 10 kH.

I like this webpage, which explains it a lot better than me:

http://www.csd.net/~cgadd/aqua/art_plant_co2chart.htm

In fact, with homemade Yeast injectors, I'd argue that in an Apisto tank, a greater danger will occur with a higher kH. Here's why:

Say you have a kH of 2. Your average CO2 injector pumps about 25 ppm CO2 into the water when it's going good, which means your pH will be 6.4. If disaster strikes and your CO2 injector goes wild, it's still unlikely that your pH will ever get below 6.0 (to do so, you'd need to pump in 60 ppm of CO2 - highly unlikely!). And as long as things stay above 6.0, your Apistos will be probably be fine. The reality is, most CO2/pH problems don't result from adding the CO2 with Yeast injectors. They result from the CO2 running out.

Let's switch things up: Say your kH is 5. When your CO2 generator is pumping in 25 ppm CO2, your pH is a dandy 6.8. But what happens if your generator craps out (a far more likely occurence, by the way, then having a generator suddenly pump 60 ppm CO2 into your water for no reason)? If your generator craps out, your CO2 level plummets from 25 ppm to about 3 ppm (3 ppm is about the norm for a tank without any CO2 injection, give or take). So in the span of a few hours, your pH has jumped to 7.7. Your dwarf cichlids will not like this. In the wild, they exist in the 6's and if you're going to have fluxuations, that's where they should be. If you quickly shoot above 7.5 pH in a matter of hours, I think you're in Apisto Danger Country.

So when it comes to soft water fish and CO2 injection, it would be my thesis that high kH, not low, is the more dangerous thing. A.) because Apistos can handle fluxuations in the low pH ranges better than fluxuations in the high pH ranges; and B.) because a disaster with a CO2 generator usually occurs when the generator STOPS working, which involves a rising pH into the 7's, not a dropping pH into the 5's.

(Keep in mind, my thesis only extends to yeast injectors. With pressurized CO2, you mostly eliminate the chances of your CO2 running out...andyou also have the ability to pump in a lot more CO2 in the first place, making a dropping pH a more significant danger.)

 

[Eva32181]

I like the sound of that thesis. I am committed to diy CO2, so I really hope you are right! I have been keeping a log of my pH for the past few weeks to see what's going on in my tank. Maybe this will help your argument:

The lowest reading I have ever recorded was 6.2. I was using a water softener pillow and had just prepared a CO2 mixture with lots of yeast and not enoght sugar (so it burns very hot then fizzes out quickly, as farm has explained to me). Now I use less yeast and more sugar, and things have stayed pretty constant. All of my readings after that are between 6.4 to 6.6, depending on time of day and recency of water changes.

The highest reading I have ever recorded was 7.2 - I have a note next to this date that says the CO2 reactor bell was empty - meaning I ran out of CO2 (that high yeast solution burned out and I didn't replace it). My KH was probably around 2-4 at that time.

What I do now to keep my tank at a stable 6.5 - I use farm's recipie for the CO2 solution, and I use two CO2 bottles instead of just one so there is always a contant supply. And I only change 20% of the water at a time (my tap is over 8), so there are no swings on cleaning day.

Hope this helps!