Tropical Fish Forum
Tropical Fish Keeping Help and Advice => Fish Tank Plant Advice => Topic started by: Matt on September 03, 2017, 07:40:27 AM
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Note by Sue:
I have split this thread https://forums.thinkfish.co.uk/fish-tank-plant-advice/bacopa-carolinians-melting-during-fishless-cycle/ to create this new thread.
The posts follow on from a comment in the last post by marquismirage in that thread
The recommended water hardness for bacopa caroliniana is 71.43 - 142.86ppm
Can I ask where you got the hardness range from? I've been looking for plant hardness ranges for a while!...
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I have hard water and I find that vallis and crypts do very well with little maintenance/attention. The tiger vallis in the hatchet tank is more than a meter long, which is a slight hindrance in an 80cm tank, but the hatchets like cover, so as long as the plants are healthy they stay.
I have echinodoris martii major and some bucephalandra doing well in the river tank, but I have used some RO in that to bring the hardness down a bit, and I dose daily with ferts & liquid carbon.
Apart from that I have managed to epically fail with a wide range of plants in the past, though possibly due to my lack of plant maintenance in most tanks.
I also have some aponogeton ulvaceus in a couple of tanks, which seem to be doing fine with limited attention, but I'm always interested in any information that people have about plants that thrive in hard water.
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Can I ask where you got the hardness range from? I've been looking for plant hardness ranges for a while!...
Tell me about it, water conditions for plants are so hard to come by! The website I use is en.aqua-fish.net and is great for not only that but for tips for how to prune plants and best propagation techniques for individual species. Sadly it's not a complete list but it's better than nothing at all. One of my books has a list in it of what plants thrive in what water but I can't seem to find the list now. Must have lent it to one of my marras.
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That's awesome thank you. I've noticed the advanced search function lets you create a list of plants by hardness levels.
I'm going to be playing with this for a few hours!!!
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Taking out high light demanding plants and inputting my water parameters, then changing the maximum plant size from 5cm up to 30cm; I get the following recommended (that I like), and I've underlined the ones on my possible purchases list:
- anubias <already growing these successfully, same plant as when I first started the tank>
- bacopa <have had previously a couple of times but doesn't last, like the look of it though, anyone else had any success with this?>
- crypts (wentii) <worry about melting as I like to be able to dig everything up every now and then to clean>
- swords <still have the same plants I started my tank with :) and wouldn't mind giving one of the smaller species a go, though dwarf hairgrass never grew so might try dwarf sag>
- sagittaria (dwarf) <never tried>
- bolbitis <going to give this a go at some point as I tried previously but bought the wrong thing... :vcross:>
- hygrophila polysperma <growing well but has holes in leaves>
- Aponogeton crispus <not the easiest plant as needs quite a lot of light but it grows slowly in my tank and its one I love the look of>
- java fern <really want some of this (the narrow leaf stuff) but not enough room in current setup as I would want to have it in the wood where I currently have one of the large anubias species>
- vallis (nana) <not lasted in tank before but my water has become harder recently and so I would like to try some again, but not really enough space at the moment
- zosterella dubia <this ones new on me... anyone seen this one before?>
Hornwort didnt come up, possibly not in their database, pretty sure its a grow anywhere plant anyway! Grows fast in the tank currently.
LAST UPDATED: 03/09/17 19:20
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Hornwort didnt come up, possibly not in their database, pretty sure its a grow anywhere plant anyway! Grows fast in the tank currently.
It's there as ceratophyllum demersum in the ceratophyllaceae section but as a high light demanding plant.
I've had success with bacopa monnieri in the volcanic tank where it's the only plant and in the back of the amazon tank. You shouldn't have a problem with sagittaria subulata or echinodorus quadricostatus (smaller amazon sword). Except the problem of where to draw the line in your scape as both of these grow quick and will boss the tank if you let it.
My hygrophila polysperma rosanervig also gets holes in the bottom leaves. I'm not 100% sure why but I think the plant concentrates on new growth first. If you trim those leaves off fresh new leaves grow quick and a lovely green. I've managed to get a pink sheen on the top most leaves which tells me that they're getting the right nutrients. With many plants you see pics of them looking great but no steps on how to get there. I've pruned and trimmed back mine twice and propagated with new stem cuts.
Those are the ones listed that I've had experience with. Most of the care has been trial and error. The zosterella dubia looks like heteranthera zosterifolia. A lot of these plants have multiple names and are being reclassified all the time. I have some of this growing at the rear of the amazon tank assuming it's the same plant. It grows very lush and bushy. I'll zoom in on some of the plants when I do the videos later this week and try and show some of the things mentioned here.
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@marquismirage Great find Mark. It explains why some of my so-called "easy plants" failed. Also, why c.wendtii struggles, but c.beckettii thrives, and v.spiralis does well, but v.torta failed. Excellent resource!! Definitely an aid to future purchases.
Skittler
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Thanks @marquismirage that's great. ;D