# Those of us who have moved from liquid rock to soft water, are you surprised how easy is is to now grow plants?



## castle (6 Jul 2022)

As title says, everything I’ve tried on Tropica’s advanced while living in Norfolk would wither and die, now living close to the highlands of Scotland, difficult plants seem to do fine with water from the tap. 

I guess I’m a bit shocked not at how much a difference water from your tap makes keeping plants, but more how much easier it is with softer water 😅


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## jaypeecee (6 Jul 2022)

Hi @castle 

In her book, _Ecology of the Planted Aquarium_, Diana Walstad discusses this topic in the section on Plant Nutrition and Ecology. If you can get your hands on a copy, I think you will find it interesting.

JPC


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## Wookii (6 Jul 2022)

castle said:


> As title says, everything I’ve tried on Tropica’s advanced while living in Norfolk would wither and die, now living close to the highlands of Scotland, difficult plants seem to do fine with water from the tap.
> 
> I guess I’m a bit shocked not at how much a difference water from your tap makes keeping plants, but more how much easier it is with softer water 😅



Yes, I've found it easier since moving to RO - or rather than easier, I should say I get less issues with algae and the like.


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## dw1305 (6 Jul 2022)

Hi all,


castle said:


> I guess I’m a bit shocked not at how much a difference water from your tap makes keeping plants, but more how much easier it is with softer water 😅


I think there are a <"number of factors">.  It is also <"partially why"> I <"suggest rain-water"> to people who have a hard tap supply.

Many <"nutrients are more available">  in soft water.
T(D)IC (<"Total (Dissolved) Inorganic Carbon">) is in the form of CO2 at lower pH levels and available to all plants.
You have more of a <"blank slate"> to start off with.
In harder water high levels of calcium (Ca) can <"block the uptake of other nutrients">. 
Many of Tropica's advanced plants are "advanced" purely because <"they are calcifuge">, come from soft water, can't use bicarbonate HCO3- as their TIC source etc.
I have a jaundiced view, but I think most of the "advice" about <"re-mineralising soft water"> is written by people who either don't understand water chemistry and / or have <"a product to sell">.

cheer Darrel


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## _Maq_ (6 Jul 2022)

Yes, soft water is a blessing. But some people point out that balancing macronutrients in good ratios is a bit more demanding in low mineralized water.


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## Garuf (6 Jul 2022)

Oh how I live and dream. I’ve know nothing but potable pebble dash.


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## Conort2 (6 Jul 2022)

Yes, since I moved to ro water it’s been a lot easier although I’ve found some wendtii type crypts certainly preferred the harder water.


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## dw1305 (6 Jul 2022)

Hi all, 


Conort2 said:


> I’ve found some wendtii type crypts certainly preferred the harder water.


Yes, there definitely are <"some plants"> that are better in <"harder water">.  Hard water definitely isn't a deal breaker, you just have to look at an <"English Chalk stream">.

cheers Darrel


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## Garuf (6 Jul 2022)

It’s also good if you like (most) livebearers. 
My water would be great for montezuma swordtails. 🤔


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## dino21 (6 Jul 2022)

Wookii said:


> Yes, I've found it easier since moving to RO - or rather than easier, I should say I get less issues with algae and the like.


Hi,
Thought your area was generally Soft water ?
Do you add anything  to your RO water before pouring into the tank or just rely on the fertilisers you use ?


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## Wookii (6 Jul 2022)

dino21 said:


> Hi,
> Thought your area was generally Soft water ?



The tap water is about 6dKH / 12dGH, so not soft, but not quite the liquid rock that many have.



dino21 said:


> Do you add anything  to your RO water before pouring into the tank or just rely on the fertilisers you use ?



Yes, I remineralise with MgSO4 and CaCl2 to about 6GH for the benefit of the shrimp I keep but don't add any carbonates so maintain zero KH -  though I have some Tangerine Tigers on order which can  apparently be bred happily on 3-4dGH.


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## Garuf (6 Jul 2022)

Wookii said:


> The tap water is about 6dKH / 12dGH, so not soft, but not quite the liquid rock that many have.
> 
> 
> 
> Yes, I remineralise with MgSO4 and CaCl2 to about 6GH for the benefit of the shrimp I keep but don't add any carbonates so maintain zero KH -  though I have some Tangerine Tigers on order which can  apparently be bred happily on 3-4dGH.


I have them breeding in liquid rock quite happily but they do take a very long time to get a stable colony.


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## Wookii (6 Jul 2022)

Garuf said:


> I have them breeding in liquid rock quite happily but they do take a very long time to get a stable colony.



Yeah, they have quite a wide range of acceptable parameters, but they are the only shrimp I have come across that can tolerate water with such a low TDS, which is ideal for my soft water tanks, and means I can lower the GH/TDS.


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## AlecF (6 Jul 2022)

That wonderful water is to make up for the midges.


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## Geoffrey Rea (6 Jul 2022)

castle said:


> I guess I’m a bit shocked not at how much a difference water from your tap makes keeping plants, but more how much easier it is with softer water 😅



Always found there’s a range with differing species. It’s less the KH and GH and more about how you get X nutrient into said species. You can cheat.

That’s not to say you can’t create beautiful tanks with either extreme. Suitable plant selection is half the effort.

Cambridgeshire hard as nails tap water works great if you select the palette appropriately:






Plants like Ludwigia palustris, Hottania palustris, Trident fern and Bolbitis will readily thrive in very hard tap:





Trident can grow clean as a whistle in hard tap:





It’s why hard tap tanks look a bit of the same… less colours to paint with. Rotala’s are prone to stunting and some Ludwigia’s are a handful. Calcium abundance in exchange for H+ in your substrate, knackering the initial buffering and CEC of your substrate obviously isn’t desirable.

Super soft water (0KH and <3GH) also has its problems and benefits. N, P and Co2 balancing is simpler as you can rely on substrate for the first two, but the latter (co2) can seem a little more illustrious. You appear to be getting away with murder… until you ain’t. 

Plant forms are ‘tighter’, less space between nodes and similar species are sharper:





@dw1305 has already covered why in post #4 and inclined to agree that:



dw1305 said:


> Hard water definitely isn't a deal breaker, you just have to look at an <"English Chalk stream">.



For any beginners reading, changing water consistently in the first year is of great benefit to the overall health of your system, regardless of parameters. Takes you a long way. On top… Choosing plants that do just fine in hard tap makes for an easier hobby life too.


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## PARAGUAY (7 Jul 2022)

I always was struck by those huge aquarium set ups by James Findley on updates it would often say " for whatever reason James has replaced and plant a is replaced by plant b" So what @ Geoffrey Rea says get plants what do it for your conditions. There is always a similar plant to try unless your trying to grow a real rareity .


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## Andy Pierce (7 Jul 2022)

PARAGUAY said:


> I always was struck by those huge aquarium set ups by James Findley on updates it would often say " for whatever reason James has replaced and plant a is replaced by plant b" So what @ Geoffrey Rea says get plants what do it for your conditions. There is always a similar plant to try unless your trying to grow a real rareity .


This is my experience as well, not just with aquatic plants but gardening in general.


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## kayjo (7 Jul 2022)

Is there a resource that lists aquarium plants according to type of water  (hard / soft)they prefer?

I often see plants listed according to prefered light  levels , but not water hardness.
My tap water is KH 3 and     GH  4       pH 7.4  
Snails  struggle to survive.    Emersive plants do great, but submerged plants, not so much.  Adding cuttlebone powder helps the snails.


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## Garuf (7 Jul 2022)

You can use aquasabis website and data base but it’s not especially intuitive on either count.


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## shangman (8 Jul 2022)

Andy Pierce said:


> This is my experience as well, not just with aquatic plants but gardening in general.


This is what my dad (a very experienced gardener) has always said to me whenevre I get annoyed about a dodgy plant... you can have all the right parameters for a plant and it can just drop dead on you anyway, but other plants might technically not be in perfect conditions but thrive. You just have to keep them and see which ones like you and which ones don't! The fun is working out which ones love you and will thrive under your particular care  

Personally I still can't grow many plants hightech that well at all, but in lowtech I can get apparently difficult plants to grow luscious and thick in rain and tap. A curse and a gift!


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## castle (29 Aug 2022)

Finally coming back to this, glad that I’m not alone in noticing the difference 😅

@Geoffrey Rea you’re a talented dude, so of course you can make it work, and that was good advice, but all the cool plants are better suited to soft water 😁 you’re right plant selection is key, but the information isn’t easy to come by. In the last planted tank I had (in Cambridge) I found really good growth, once I’d switched to predominately crypt heavy scape. 

Once thing I don’t use in my aquariums is co2, which I think without it makes a hard water tank really tough going. 

@dw1305 i grew up on top of these chalk streams, but I’d argue with a few exceptions their underwater life is generally quite singular, normally you’d see something like stargrass going bonkers and nothing else having a chance, not much diversity once one plant gets ahold. 

This book is excellent if you can get ahold of it: Amazon product


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## Geoffrey Rea (29 Aug 2022)

It’s not simple to get a plant to do what we expect. Thinking how to expand on this, and that’s it, what makes a plant behave in a specific way we want in an aquarium isn’t so simple. Modern setups have so many technological wonders available and a never ending online conversation about precise fertilisation… but what was the goal for the tank?!? Very doubtful it was growing plants easily for a lot of folks. For most it’s “I want rainbow colours…” 🌈 🤪

It’s co2/non-co2 injected, hard water/soft water, high light/low light, lean/EI… digital arguments for days without clarity of outcome.

Keeping a plant species growing and going for over two decades? Is that a good measure of success?

We do make plant care menacingly difficult for the newbie to the hobby. Anyone here ever ran a no tech planted tank? It’s a joy… it cost bugger all as well 😂

Here’s a hard water, Cambridgeshire tap water tank, using only indirect natural sunlight in the conservatory, hang on back filter using media that is six years mature, no heater and no co2. It’s a plant storage tank with ADA Amazonia, some shrimp that are breeding like rabbits and a small collection of White Cloud Mountain Minnows.

Staurogyne repens no tech, hard tap:






Tonina belem no tech, hard tap:





Hyptis lorentziana no tech, hard tap:





Ludwigia ‘tornado/twister’ no tech, hard tap:





Ludwigia arcuata no tech, hard tap:





Rotala bonsai no tech, hard tap:





Rotala wallichii no tech, hard tap:





Even less light than most no tech tanks because of floaters with lots of surface agitation:





Flow and distribution, yeah, no… 😂

It isn’t pretty in any scaping sense, but it’s clean and it grows.

What is simple is the plants in this tank don’t really give a rat’s bottom about anything a lot of folks consider important/vital/easier. Living for them is easy, regardless. The pace of their growth is slow. The plant mass is high. The fertilisation is minimal. The dissolved gases meet/set their needs. The interventions are infrequent. The hard/soft water argument decreases in value at this pace of growth.

So attacking the title of the thread head on, hard water isn’t a barrier to ‘easier’ plant growth even with a range of species that, yes, do colour up and look pretty in softer water, high light and co2 injection. But growing them successfully with the accelerator pedal pushed down to the floor is anything but easy. That’s a choice that has very little to do with hard or soft water.

Low tech, hard water can be done ‘easily’ with many species most would put in softer water and high light/co2 conditions in the first instance. But those plant forms that are plastered all over Instagram set the wrong standard. They also rarely show their failures running things fast with ‘easier’ nutrient acquisition for the purposes of high tech running conditions.

Growing plants ‘easily’ can mean letting things grow at a graceful pace. The plant isn’t cocking things up, it’s the tank owner and their wants.

Even feel this line of conversation I’ve created is debasing what good plant husbandary is by replacing it with a simpler argument, so will stop. What I do want to convey is, learn how to make the most of the water you have.


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## plantnoobdude (29 Aug 2022)

Geoffrey Rea said:


> We do make plant care menacingly difficult for the newbie to the hobby. Anyone here ever ran a no tech planted tank? It’s a joy… it cost bugger all as well 😂


I agree… while my new tank isn’t no tech, it is Low tech. It is an absolute joy, so far. Water changes when I feel like it, ferts if I see something pop up( very rare) and plants grow nicely😁 a bit less fussed about perfect forms and whatnot there than my high tech, but both tanks have a place close to my heart ❤️

I think most folks would be surprised how easy it is to keep a Low tech tank going with nice plants especially if you keep nice and easy growers.


Geoffrey Rea said:


> Tonina belem no tech


Gonna have to correct you there😜
Syngonanthus macrocaulon.

Absolute Beauty of a tank yours is, lean-ish ( I’m guessing) column, ammonia rich substrate, lower light. Ammonia at the roots and I suspect potassium from source water at the leaves… vin kutty, ADA got it all right!


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## jaypeecee (30 Aug 2022)

Wookii said:


> Yes, I've found it easier since moving to RO - or rather than easier, I should say I get less issues with algae and the like.


Hi @Wookii 

That's a very useful observation. And, it's supported by research. In the book _Limnology _by Robert G Wetzel, the following statement is made:

"Thus, phosphate uptake by cyanobacteria should be favored in hard waters with an abundance of divalent cations".

In other words, cyanobacteria grows well in water with high GH.

JPC


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## Geoffrey Rea (30 Aug 2022)

jaypeecee said:


> "Thus, phosphate uptake by cyanobacteria should be favored in hard waters with an abundance of divalent cations".
> 
> In other words, cyanobacteria grows well in water with high GH.



Tipping this argument on its head, is there any body of water that won’t support a variant of Cyanobacteria?


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## dw1305 (30 Aug 2022)

Hi all,


Geoffrey Rea said:


> Tipping this argument on its head, is there any body of water that won’t support a variant of Cyanobacteria?


No, like <"Diatoms and the Green algae">, they are universal anywhere there is liquid water.

This Lenntech page <"General effects of eutrophication"> lists some "algal" sp. dependent upon whether they occur in clean or polluted fresh water.

Scientists use the other microalgae as bioassay organisms for water pollution. 

Species used include:

The <"Green Algae"> _(Pseudokirchneriella subcapitata (formerly Raphidocelis subcapitata & Selenastrum capricornutum)_  & _Chlorella vulgaris_)
Diatoms (_Navicula pelliculosa & Skeletonema costatum_), and / or
Cyanobacteria (_Anabaena flos-aquae & Synechococcus leopoldensis_).
This doesn't work for cyanobacteria etc. (they don't have any persistent parts). but because diatoms have a <"silica skeleton"> (frustule) they are used to reconstruct past, as well as present, water quality by looking at the diatom assemblage from sediment cores. The <"Trophic Diatom Index">.

This is an algal bioassay paper that touches on both <"_the plants can't lie_">  and the <"Duckweed Index">.

"Novel use of the alga _Pseudokirchneriella subcapitata_, as an early-warning indicator to identify climate change ambiguity in aquatic environments using freshwater finfish farming as a case study"

<"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969719333571">


> Alga (_Pseudokirchneriella subcapitata_), more responsive model than physicochemical parameters alone.
> • Standard water quality parameters are not applicable to fish farm wastewater.
> • Duckweed and constructed wetlands were under appreciated in wastewater treatment.


cheers Darrel


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## jaypeecee (30 Aug 2022)

Geoffrey Rea said:


> Tipping this argument on its head, is there any body of water that won’t support a variant of Cyanobacteria?


Hi @Geoffrey Rea 

Any body of water has the potential to support Cyanobacteria.

But, it's entirely possible to provide an environment in which Cyanobacteria does not flourish. And I have a tank alongside me right now in which I am unable to see _any_ Cyanobacteria. I have posted about this tank before here on UKAPS. There is no conventional filtration. Instead, the plants keep the water in pristine condition. 

JPC


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## dw1305 (30 Aug 2022)

Hi all, 


jaypeecee said:


> And I have a tank alongside me right now in which I am unable to see _any_ Cyanobacteria


My guess would be that most people's established aquariums are usually in the "No obvious BGA" state. <"My lab. tanks"> are back to "no obvious cyanobacteria", although they've received  fairly cursory management since 2020.

cheers Darrel


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## Soilwork (2 Sep 2022)

Hi OP, 

How soft is your new water.  Can you link the quality report please?


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## castle (2 Sep 2022)

Out of tap I’m getting 60ppm, I’ll have to go for a hunt for the water report, I believe we get our water from Greenock


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## Valerio (22 Oct 2022)

Geoffrey Rea said:


> It’s not simple to get a plant to do what we expect. Thinking how to expand on this, and that’s it, what makes a plant behave in a specific way we want in an aquarium isn’t so simple. Modern setups have so many technological wonders available and a never ending online conversation about precise fertilisation… but what was the goal for the tank?!? Very doubtful it was growing plants easily for a lot of folks. For most it’s “I want rainbow colours…” 🌈 🤪
> 
> It’s co2/non-co2 injected, hard water/soft water, high light/low light, lean/EI… digital arguments for days without clarity of outcome.
> 
> ...


Definitely agree with you @Geoffrey Rea  and yours samples are stunning. 
I have very hard water too, KH~14 GH~16, what's yours dKH/dGH levels there in Cambridgeshire to get those wonderful results?
Using RO water mixed with my tap I've seen many times a different(better) leaf shape in some plants, more pearling, more compact growth, but it's definetly possible even in my liquid rock to get a satisfying planted tank with lush growth.


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## dw1305 (22 Oct 2022)

Hi all, 


Valerio said:


> I have very hard water too, KH~14 GH~16, what's yours dKH/dGH levels there in Cambridgeshire to get those wonderful results?


They <"will be very similar">, because both the dGH and dKH are <"derived from dissolved CaCO3"> and that provides 1 dGH : 1 dKH. The "normal value" is about 17 dGH and 17 dKH,  it is defined by the  solubility of <"calcium carbonate (CaCO3)"> and the level of atmospheric CO2. 

Because you are in Rome you may have <"some "extra" dGH"> from <"evaporite minerals"> such as magnesium sulphate (MgSO4.7H2O) and calcium sulphate (CaSO4.2H2O).

cheers Darrel


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## Valerio (23 Oct 2022)

dw1305 said:


> Hi all,
> 
> They <"will be very similar">, because both the dGH and dKH are <"derived from dissolved CaCO3"> and that provides 1 dGH : 1 dKH. The "normal value" is about 17 dGH and 17 dKH,  it is defined by the  solubility of <"calcium carbonate (CaCO3)"> and the level of atmospheric CO2.
> 
> ...


Yes @dw1305 , you are right. Here we have a ratio Ca:Mg = 4:1 out of tap with very low nutrients content ( ~0 ppm NO3/PO4 ), TDS readings are around 300-320. 
I believe in fact that those fantastic results derive from their excellent skills rather then from the quality of the water, I've never been able to grow pinnatifida in straight tap, for example, like the guys in AG do. However, I believe that having soft water greatly simplifies the general cultivation of aquatic plants for a not advanced hobbyist.


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## dw1305 (23 Oct 2022)

Hi all,


Valerio said:


> Here we have a ratio Ca:Mg = 4:1 out of tap with very low nutrients content ( ~0 ppm NO3/PO4 ), TDS readings are around 300-320.


Similar to <"our tap water">, your water has more magnesium (Mg) and a slightly lower conductivity value.


Valerio said:


> I believe that having soft water greatly simplifies the general cultivation of aquatic plants for a not advanced hobbyist.


I'm pretty sure you are right, soft water makes life easier, mainly because you don't have the <"same issues with solubility">, or calcium carbonate (CaCO3) <"scale deposition"> etc.

I'm a rainwater user (it rains a lot in W. England), which I understand <"isn't an option for you">, and that means I keep fish and plants suited to moderately soft water. Because this is a limestone area I don't keep any black-water fish, our rain water <"is still too hard for them">.

If I couldn't use rain water, I would use our tap water (I don't really have any reservations about it), but keep <"fish and plants that are from hard water">. It just makes sense.

cheers Darrel


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