Huge disaster with plants!

[Sweetie]

Hi everyone 👋 I've successfully kept real aquatic plants for years, and had a few Anubias that were really beautiful (one especially was huge) - that was until I added a load of crushed coral into both my tank and external filter to naturally raise the PH, which had started dropping and showing the effect of a few of my snail's shells 🙈
I had no idea that adding the crushed coral would have repercussions beyond raising the PH but it did.. First, a couple of red Crypto's started melting, so I removed them and put it them in other tanks, where both are now thriving again.. My Anubias literally just turned to mush and fell apart - I came in one day and found the giant one in about 20 pieces floating round the tank 😢 This was closely followed by a few Java ferns and another large stringy plant at the back (I don't know what it's called, sorry..)
I'm absolutely devastated, and more than a bit panicking too.. I think I need to try dosing magnesium/macros to keep up with the extra calcium from the coral, but I know very little about it and I'm worried about my little creatures being in the same water like a science project if I do it wrong? 😣 I tried API Leaf Zone for 2months, no effect, but I've also got Fluval Grow+ if that's better? Can anyone advise please? 🙏 I've included a picture of one of my beautiful Anubias before the coral, then a scrap after attached to a top of a cave..😢
Any help/advice will be very gratefully received. Thankyou 🙏🤞 xx

 

[Sweetie]

Here are a couple more "Before Disaster" pictures (helpfully modelled by my snails and fish, before I added the crushed coral..) where everything was green and lush! 😢💔

 

[G H Nelson]

Hi
More information would be helpful.

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[X3NiTH]

As you have found your water parameters changed significantly away from what the plants were used to before, crypts are very good a letting you know, it’s a good canary!

What happened was that your carbonate hardness rose significantly due to the addition of the coral sand and it interacting with any and all acids in the tank including CO2 continuously from the atmosphere, too fast for some plants and ultimately fatal.

Fauna in the tank should be fine they have better adaptability to changing conditions and their nutritional needs are met external to the water whereas plants rely and what is in the water column or soils for nutrition and both can be affected if carbonate hardness rises too quickly.

In the first instance would be that the change of pH tending likely higher than neutral (pH7something) and thus likely out of range for the Chelate (binding molecule such as EDTA) used to bind Iron to make it plant available, if Iron is completely unavailable long term it will really hurt the plants that have a minimum requirement for it (I have found that some epiphytic plants like Anubia are susceptible to obliteration when Iron goes to zero). In the second instance if you have an Ert Active type substrate (gravel and sand etc being Inert) then it has Cation and Anion exchange capacity and thus able to swap minerals between itself and the water column depending on availability and or pH, this can lead to large water chemistry changes depending on how mineralised the substrate is.

Removing the Coral sand completely and performing small water changes for a few days will help to get the tank back to near original parameters, you can leave a small handful in the tank and perform regular waterchanges to find a new lower equilibrium for General and Carbonate hardness that may be more favourable to the plants that find it harder to adjust.

I managed to obliterate a tank of nearly all its plants by accidentally going from a KH of 0 to higher than 14 in a few days through a micro dosing accident swapping metals for carbonates in the active substrate, it wasn’t pretty, Fauna was largely unaffected though in the short term (no losses if I recall correctly).

🙂

 

[PARAGUAY]

The temptation to tinker with the tank think we are guilty there but just be guided by how your plants look@Sweetie

 

[tiger15]

Any drastic change in water parameters can affect plants and fish, not necessarily the absolute values of the parameters that matter. I use alkaline dolomite substrate to buffer pH, kH and gH respectively to 7.6, 4 and 8, and my java fern, anubias and Crypt thrive. Others have grown plants successfully in even higher pH, kH and gH. Coral sand is a strong alkaline substrate and dissolve fast. I wonder if you have testing data of pH, kH and gH before and after the event.

 

[Stu1407]

The temptation to tinker with the tank think we are guilty there but just be guided by how your plants look@Sweetie

Totally agree with you. Not a good outcome at all Sweetie, but if it ain't broke don't fix it is a great maxim in the aquarium hobby, particularly when making significant changes to water parameters.