Plants For Begginer

[Truck]

Interesting! Can't help but wonder if truck has just labeled his water as "hard!" If java ferns seem hit or miss and val seems easy, that just sounds like maybe there is plenty of either GH or KH or both to truck's water. Just out of curiosity is that the case truck?

I just mean that as a side curiosity.. what I've seen advised (perhaps Dave said just recently?) is that Vals tend to not like soft, acid water at first but if you give them time they will adjust and be ok with it. I'm not sure that java ferns (which I believe are widespread as weeds in asia (is this right?) are particularly sensitive to particular hardness and pH but I can definately say that mine are doing just fine in soft acid water! They, alone with anubias are good in quite low light.

~~waterdrop~~

My water is in the middle, I know dave used to grow it in water with a KH of 0, I've grown it in softened water, its a pretty easy plant, circulation is its preference IME, and it does well with good fertilisation.

 

[Tom499]

I've got amazon swords and dwarf amazon swords (make a great grass, maybe 10cm max atm, do need abit of tidying tho) under a maybe 15-20watt bulb and they've grown loads since September. Don't use CO2, and fertilise occassionally.

 

[waterdrop]

Interesting! Can't help but wonder if truck has just labeled his water as "hard!" If java ferns seem hit or miss and val seems easy, that just sounds like maybe there is plenty of either GH or KH or both to truck's water. Just out of curiosity is that the case truck?

I just mean that as a side curiosity.. what I've seen advised (perhaps Dave said just recently?) is that Vals tend to not like soft, acid water at first but if you give them time they will adjust and be ok with it. I'm not sure that java ferns (which I believe are widespread as weeds in asia (is this right?) are particularly sensitive to particular hardness and pH but I can definately say that mine are doing just fine in soft acid water! They, alone with anubias are good in quite low light.

~~waterdrop~~

My water is in the middle, I know dave used to grow it in water with a KH of 0, I've grown it in softened water, its a pretty easy plant, circulation is its preference IME, and it does well with good fertilisation.

Its a selfish interest I guess.. you guys are getting me slowly more interested in Vals again. I'd love to somehow get some tall flat-leaved Val-like plant forming a bit of a back curtain in my 16-17" of height. Years ago when I had little corkscrew vals as a kid, they always seems scrawny and sickly ('course I knew nothing of and did no fertilization back then) so I've been slow to accept that they might work for me. Now that I've got acid KH=0 water, I'd pretty much written them off until Dave made that statement. One thing I do have now is better circulation with the koralia going in addition to the spraybar. Is there a particular variation of Val you think might work better for me truck? WD

 

[Truck]

I think you'll be fine with all vallis, nana is my favourite, but it is a little more demanding IME, Valliseneria americana is another favourite as is spiralis.

 

[philak]

I have very hard water ( have given up on the mixing rainwater experiment for now) and planted the middle section of my tank with straight Vallis which is doing reasonably well and spreading nicely via runners.

A little later i planted the spiral variety in amongst the first Vallis to fill out the spaces a little and two months after that all the spiral stuff is virtually dead and gone. I can only assume it doesn't thrive in hard water.It just seems to rot from the base of the leaves upwards.

It's a semi hi tech set up in that im using pressurised CO2 but with relatively low light of roughly 1.25 WPG. I'm using Eco complete over gravel as a substrate and dosing ferts too so it shouldn't be a case of missing nutrients.

 

[OldMan47]

With only 1.25 WPG, you do not want to add much in the way of ferts or CO2, the light will quickly become the limiting factor in a tank like that. It can be very successful but excess fertilizers are just that, they are an excess. I also run a fairly low light setup at only 2.0 WPG with small amounts of CO2 and ferts. The plants in that tank grow about as well as the NPT that I am running with no added ferts and no CO2 added. It is just another approach that seems to work well for low to medium lighting.

 

[aaronnorth]

I cant grow vallis at all, give me any other plants and it i'm fine
I just cant understand why though! They dont die, but they dont grow either... left for about 2months too which is the minimum I give plants to adapt.
I have tried twice, in a low tech & high tech. In the end I went for cyperus helferi.

some less popular choices,

Cryptocoryne Balansae
crinium sp
aponegeton sp

All are easy & good looking too.

http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?/topic/298938-a-guide-on-where-to-buy-plants/

 

[OldMan47]

You might want to try an NPT approach Aaron. It is a definite departure for a typical high tech person because it takes moderate light but no added ferts or CO2. I run a 40 breeder with no ferts, no CO2 and 110 watts of 6700K light over it. The vals in that tank are so dense my fish have trouble swimming through them. The tank started with about a dozen vals, some duckweed, a large crypt, the kind in the picture earlier, and a few java ferns, the ones with the frayed style leaves (Windelev?). All of those plants are still growing well except the duckweed. Eventually it got to the point that the duckweed could not compete with the planted plants and they gradually died off. It makes for a nice low maintenance tank that gets 3 water changes a year and regular feedings for the fish in the tank. There is never any algae visible now that the plants have taken off but the first couple of months I had a bit of trouble with BGA. Nitrates are always at zero and the only reason for a water change is to recharge the minerals in the water that have been removed by the plants as building blocks for growth.

 

[aaronnorth]

You might want to try an NPT approach Aaron. It is a definite departure for a typical high tech person because it takes moderate light but no added ferts or CO2. I run a 40 breeder with no ferts, no CO2 and 110 watts of 6700K light over it. The vals in that tank are so dense my fish have trouble swimming through them. The tank started with about a dozen vals, some duckweed, a large crypt, the kind in the picture earlier, and a few java ferns, the ones with the frayed style leaves (Windelev?). All of those plants are still growing well except the duckweed. Eventually it got to the point that the duckweed could not compete with the planted plants and they gradually died off. It makes for a nice low maintenance tank that gets 3 water changes a year and regular feedings for the fish in the tank. There is never any algae visible now that the plants have taken off but the first couple of months I had a bit of trouble with BGA. Nitrates are always at zero and the only reason for a water change is to recharge the minerals in the water that have been removed by the plants as building blocks for growth.

That is the one thing I haven't done yet, but it might be an option as I am considering 2 x 60litres in place of my current tank
I would show you a picture of my low tech but I havent got one , not sure if you can remember it but it was a fluval vicenza 180.

 

[waterdrop]

Maybe there are even more differences between soil delivery of some subset of the nutrients and water column delivery than even gets written about much. This always seems like one of the areas of difference between low and high that might offer a lot of secrets to differences found in the success of individual species between the two approaches.

I wonder if there's a difference in the makeup (as opposed to the level) of the mineral content that OM has vs. what Aaron has? I know OM's water is so hard that he uses RO if he wants to go with softer water. I assume yours is pretty hard too Aaron? Have either of you ever tried to characterize the makeup of minerals and their relative levels that comprise your GH reading? (Or could it even be iron, since that sometimes seems to be key?)

WD

 

[OldMan47]

I don't seem to have the iron that some people around here have WD. I have never really spent the effort to try to measure my water's mineral content beyond the gross level. It has a TDS of about 225 ppm, a GH and KH both over 10 degrees and a pH of 7.8 from the tap. My fertile substrate is not all that fertile but has lots of capacity to hold nutrients. What I actually use is the cheapest potting soil that I can find in a garden shop. It has no added fertilizers and is quite high in organic matter. I suspect a major component of the mix is nothing more than sphagnum moss and ground up wood byproducts. Being trapped under the gravel, it does not drive my pH low so I am not very aware of the chemical actions except in one respect. It does make the minerals in the fish waste and similar products available to my plants roots. When I started using this method was the first time I ever saw my vals refuse to send out side shoots in the water column. They only send them out into the substrate. I think they like my substrate.

 

[aaronnorth]

8dKH
12dGH
pH 7.5
Fe 7ppm
TDS 410ppm
conductivity 612uS/cm

So nothing out of the ordinary. Substrate was JBL aqubasis+ which is clay & sphagnum moss. It has a high CEC so the nutrients being taken out of the water was from TPN+
Potassium Nitrate
Potassium Phosphate
Potassium Sulphate
Magnesium Sulphate Heptahydrate
EDTA Chelated Trace Elements Mix

The only thing that it may have been is the low HCO3 level But people grow it in 0dKH

 

[waterdrop]

wonder of OM47's iron would be lower than 7ppm?

 

[OldMan47]

I have no idea what the actual number is WD, but I do not get the staining on plumbing fixtures that come with high iron water. Mine stay nice without doing anything about iron. They do pick up a white deposit from calcium though.