Bacopa Caroliniana Melting During Fishless Cycle

Hello all,

I'm currently attempting to fishless cycle my first tank (using SafeStart).  Details as follows:

Tank: Fluval Roma 125 (with the heater, U3 filter and light that came with it)
Substrate: Tetra Complete & sand
Live plants
Lights on a timer for 10 hours a day
AquaSafe added

Water parameters (using API Master Test Kit):
 
High pH: 7.4
pH: 7.6
GH: 15.5 (from local water co. website)
Day 6 (Today)
Ammonia: 0.5
Nitrite: 0.5
Nitrate: 40 (this seems normal for local water, unfortunately)

After the tank had been running for a day or two after initial setup, but before starting the cycle, the water went a bit cloudy white, so I removed the 2 pieces of wood that I had in there, emptied as much water as I could, then refilled, conditioned and started again (keeping the wood out).  Within a few days, the Bacopa caroliniana had started melting.  The very newest growth at the tips is light green, but all the other leaves are dark and floppy.  Should I cut my losses, take it out and get something else, or stick with it?  Photo attached.

Thanks in advance!

Thanks Sue.  I think I'll probably go for the bucket option.  The plant was submerged in when purchased so I wouldn't think that's the problem.  In fairness, I don't know much about the plant's water requirements, but we do have hard water, which I suppose could also be a problem for some plants.

Thanks for the advice, Matt.  I've kept it in for now, as there does appear to be even more new growth coming through today, but I'll keep an eye on things.

I wasn't planning to stock the tank completely right from the off anyway, so I'll start slow, monitor the water and build up when it seems safe to do so.

That's good to know, thanks Sue.  Going to add more ammonia today, as it's now dropped right down and nitrites are up. 

I'd ultimately like to have Cherry Barbs, X-Ray Tetra and either Bronze or Three-Lined Cory (we have hard, alkaline water).  Is there one of these that would be the best to start with?  Not sure if any of them stand out as being more hardy and therefore perhaps more suited to being the first in there!

The screenshot of the water company figures in your other thread give the hardness as 108.9 mg/l calcium. Converting that to the two units used in fishkeeping, your hardness is 15.2 dH (aka German deg) and 272 ppm.

Cherry barbs are fine at 36 to 357 ppm
X-ray tetras 2 to 20 dH (though Seriously Fish comments that soft water is best for spawning them)
Bronze cories - 36 to 268 ppm
Three lines cory - 1 to 12 dH.

Your water is a bit on the hard side for cories I'm afraid. If you are particularly keen to have cories, you would need to add some RO water as fcmf suggests. The time to do this is before you get fish. It wouldn't need much RO water to get the hardness down a bit but I would suggest getting a GH tester. You would need to check how much RO water gives a hardness low enough for the cories without spending a lot of money on more RO water than you need.
You would have to do water changes with tap:RO mixed in the same proportions and make sure there is some RO water on standby at all times just in case you ever need to do an emergency water change.

I only believe information on 2 sites. The main one is Seriously Fish as that contains a lot more information and is written by experts. The other is FishBase which is written by and for scientists but has less information than SF of use to fish keepers.
Though Fishbase gives hardness 5 to 19 dH for both cories, which goes higher than SF 

There are so many sites out there that have rubbish on them, which is why I stick to the ones that are known to have correct information.

Thanks for the advice.  If you see my other post, you'll see that I've now removed it though!  I cleaned out the entire tank due to diatoms taking over, and there was no way I would have been able to get these plants back in, they were in such a state.  I replaced them with Cryptocoryne wendtil; at least the leaves are bigger and easier to deal with if they melt too!  I'll definitely look out for some vallisneria though - it was on my initial plant wish list, but the shop didn't have it unfortunately.