JMorgan
Member
I'm admittedly biased but I pretty much ALWAYS think that plants are a good idea, - and as Darrel's photo above shows, Lake Tanganyika isn't an exception as far as mother nature is concerned . I was only saying that if your starting point, your tap water, is on the softer side and you want to keep fish that prefer harder water, then emergent plant growth will tip the balance more towards lowering TDS, though not in a way you can't rectify if you want to.
However, I just looked it up by googling Milton Keynes tap water and it seems you have hard water so, assuming you'd plan on doing regular water changes anyway, I'd imagine you could have a lot of emergent plants (roots in the water - leaves out of the water) and not notice any change in TDS. So to the contrary I think you could create a pretty stunning looking tank that had lots of emergent plants as a back drop to a more typical african sub aquatic "rocky" aquascape: you could even have the classic "rock wall" with nooks and crannies to plant in, or a rocky island with all manner of things growing out of it.
cheers
However, I just looked it up by googling Milton Keynes tap water and it seems you have hard water so, assuming you'd plan on doing regular water changes anyway, I'd imagine you could have a lot of emergent plants (roots in the water - leaves out of the water) and not notice any change in TDS. So to the contrary I think you could create a pretty stunning looking tank that had lots of emergent plants as a back drop to a more typical african sub aquatic "rocky" aquascape: you could even have the classic "rock wall" with nooks and crannies to plant in, or a rocky island with all manner of things growing out of it.
cheers
