KH and pH relationship

[seangee]

When I prune I prune hard. Thankfully this doesn't happen every year After a big prune I always fertilise for a couple of weeks to kickstart regrowth.

Oh and includining here

 

[gjohnson050]

Are you joking? You must not read anything i post anywhere - this is one of my aquariums with ph below 6:

No sorry, I just joined due to this one question. Ill hang around though and once i get something going along well Ill post a photo.

 

[anewbie]

I wanted to mention one thing - in very soft water with the right plants it is some-what important to NOT make your light too bright - i have fairly strong lights on my aquariums but i run them at around 20 to 25% and in many of the aquariums the par is below 10 at the bottom.

The other thing that is important as briefly mentioned above is making sure you pick soft water plants - hard plants simply will not grow in extreme softness - luckily there are many softwater plants.

I do put in some root tabs but only once or twice a year.

 

[seangee]

I wanted to mention one thing - in very soft water with the right plants it is some-what important to NOT make your light too bright - i have fairly strong lights on my aquariums but i run them at around 20 to 25% and in many of the aquariums the par is below 10 at the bottom.

The other thing that is important as briefly mentioned above is making sure you pick soft water plants - hard plants simply will not grow in extreme softness - luckily there are many softwater plants.

I do put in some root tabs but only once or twice a year.

Agree! Not sure what else you are planning but cardinals (and most forest fish) don't like bright light and it stresses them. That is why I and @anewbie (I assume) have so much surface cover. I tend to keep half of the surface 100% covered using a physical barrier to keep the floating plants in place. The cardinals are always found in the shaded half.