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Are there any plants that like very black water?

Myrtle

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Joined
21 Aug 2008
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Location
Basingstoke
Hi, so I have a kind of paludarium with a drip wall:
20220824_194604.jpg

The water drips through a mix of coir, cork bark, sphagnum and coconut fibre which creates VERY tannin stained water. It's much darker than it appears in the photo!
The water is just tap water right now but I'm going to change over to rain water.
Are there any specific plants that would flourish in this environment, either submersed or fully aquatic? I can add extra light from the tank front as otherwise there will be practically zero!
All I can think of are crypts but to be honest, my knowledge is limited and wouldn't know which would be suitable...

Thanks,
Jo
 
Crypts it is then! Are there any which would like it better than others, do you think? I've got pretty hard water from the tap but rainwater would be much softer (I assume) so I'll have to remove my single shrimp I think... it's been joined by some midge larvae recently :rolleyes:
Crypts may melt if you swap from tap to rain while they are in the tank! I would try keep parameters stable before you introduce any cryptocoryne species.
 
I suppose the water is strongly acidic. Blyxa, Tonina, Syngonanthus like it, and seem quite easy to me given low pH (5). Yet they like light, too, and I must admit I've never tried keeping them in black water. You might give it a try, if successful, it might look magnificent.
 
Blyxa, Tonina, Syngonanthus like it,
I’ve managed to keep tonina and blyxa with pretty low light in extremely low tds water. Blyxa stayed rather small but tonina didn’t do too bad and had decent form. I found rotala wallichii to do really well too.

Anubias and Java fern will also do a job however you’ll have to go for one of the smaller varieties.

Cheers
 
Tonina fluviatilis grow well without additional co2 in my tanks, providing water (kh) is soft. They are a nice and slow growing stem, which aren’t very demanding, can grow floating, in sand, or soil. A very nice candidate for the black water aquarium.
 
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