Let's Talk About Plants In Hard Water 

Those rainbows where doing a little something in the beginning 😂 😂

Wow you just gave me the last piece of information that made everything about aquatic plants I've been trying to figure out make sence.

Commenting for the algorithm

This is great info. Just to point out that the hard water or high pH is not the actual problem here as the vast majority of plants will adapt and grow very well. Plants even use carbonate and bicarbonate compounds (KH) within the water as a source of carbon for photosynthesis. The actual issue is that plants also need food to grow and the common ferts that are dosed, e.g., micro or trace where the FE iron is EDTA that precipitates at pH 6.5/7 and iron is simply unavailable. So, a low-tech hard water aquarium is less forgiving with an inbalance of light and nutrients. Alternatives to the above iron is FE DTPA (which is 60% unavailable at pH 8) or FE eddha (maintains iron availability to plants past pH 9.0 but it will tint water reddish) or ferrous iron gluconate I.e seachem flourish Iron (degrades very quickly). Other than that, magnesium and potassium are usually lacking. Nitrate and phosphates are not generally needed with an average stocked tank.

That was great!!! I learned how it works. My tds out of the tap is 750. Ph 7.6. I have a deep substrate and you just explained how plants grow.

Knowledge is fluid. This was very helpful. Another thought I’m having after listening to you is about the influence of temperature, CO2, oxygen relative to pH.

I’ve been researching this a lot, and I’ve been in the aquarium world for decades, and that realization that RO water is a waste, and simply lowering the pH seems to be absolutely correct everything I’ve seen says to stop stripping the water of its nutrients and simply lower the pH.

I just watched another one of your videos before this one and both have clarified my issues. I have a low PH in hard water. My issue is my KH and this video was great. That one little bit of info that brought it all together. Thank you again for posting

Found your video 3 days ago. Before my new leaf anubias have pale yellow with green veins. I manage bring down pH from around 8.4 slowly in 2 days to 6.7. My tds around 500ppm. Dose with k2so4 and eddha fe, now that new leaf looks much better. Thanks for helpful video...

0:12 I couldn't have been more distracted! 😂 I had to rewind and listen to you again because I am not knowledgeable enough about fish copulation to determine if I was right about what I was seeing.

Thank you... this was my final bit of info I needed for my Aha moment as well!

This was extremely informative and interesting

Muchísimas gracias por compartir esta información tan útil!!! Saludos desde Argentina. Nuevo suscriptor!!!

I've learned a lot of this the hard way. I feel like there is still much to learn. Because of injuries and surgery I ended up only being able to do water top offs for like 4 months. Many master aquarist can do it, why can't I? Things started dying - including duckweed. I bought a TDS meter. One tank had a TDS of 1600 ppm. I am slowly lowering the TDS in my tanks. The problems are complex and too extensive for here but yes, know what GH and KH are. Again, this is complex.

Great info

I didn't even try plants when I had 7.8 and very hard water, but I've seen others have success, especially with CO2. Where I live now I am around 7.1 but a gh over 300... and growing plants really well with or without co2. Light and proper ferts more important in my personal experience - my one tank with a poor light from a kit isn't doing as well as my others. But even that tank has Jungle val doing runners... in sand. It can be done!

I love ur tank I'm thinking about getting a 90g or 125g tank thank u for inspiring me

I can confirm that even duckweed struggles in my hardwater 500+ppm and 8.5 ph xD XD The only thing that does consistently well are Marino moss balls for some reason. Anubis seems to hang on for a while, but eventually will yellow and struggle.

Interesting! Made me interested to test my ph in the substrate itself now. I have tap water with a ph of 7.6 and is moderately hard, usually 150-200ppm whenever I check and in general I don’t tend to have plants struggle. Instead of algae when I have a struggling plant I usually see a kind of crust form on the leaves which I always assumed was a calcium or other mineral build up now the plant is not using nutrients or is getting prevented from using nutrients some how. Thanks for the video, going to be doing some tests now I’m curious

Clean trim on the beard! I cannot get over that Java fern bundle!

thanks to u i found my answer

My water is 300+ ppm GH, ZERO KH and a pH of 7.4. It just makes the waterline very crusty.

Dan, I can relate to what you are saying. Many of my aquariums have hard water & higher pH ~ 7.6 Most of my plants do well, but I noticed if the pH does indeed go higher, my aquatic plants will struggle a bit. Typically, the GH & KH have been around 200 ppm, on average. Mostly keep these water parameters for my hard water & higher loving pH fish. Plants are generally a secondary item for me. As mentioned it is the carbonates that affect the pH, but am wondering at what level will the GH, overall, start negatively impacting the plants? Have experimented in my aquariums with this, but usually the GH would be

Great insight! Be warned though, attempting to change the pH of your water can result in constant water stability issues.

Helpful🎉

Also don’t forget about magnesium carbonate. Calcium AND magnesium affect hardness and pH when combined with carbonate.

Very good explanation. I have pH 8 high GH water and have problems growing plants. I will try lowing the pH and see what happens.

Thats true pH matters for effective plantation. I wanna add here, Elodea and Ludwigia are the plants which sustain my pH which 8.4 ..especially elodea they do best..So those who have higher pH can try these two plants..My Java ferns died because of high pH..

I have really hard water here. Anubius and crypts seem to do great.

I think you have just explained why my crypts won't grow well at all - not dead but sick looking all the time. My water is PH8, KH 7, GH 10, local river near me is even harder. I dose Seachem liquid ferts and use ADA soil and all other plants are doing well except I have noticed Ambulia is not keen on hard water either. Tank is 9 months old. I now mix 50% rain water to bring the PH down a bit. My observations on my hard water (Outback Australia location) is: Jungle Val, loves hard water (its a native) Lileaopsis Brasil and Brisbanica, loves hard water (its a native), these 2, the natives, grow like weeds in my water Hair grass dwarf (Brasil), loves hard water Java moss doesnt seem to care but I usually have in rain water. US Fissidens moss, loves hard water Xmass moss is OK Anubia, it seems to like hard water, but am not sure, haven't had it long enough. Crypts I now have in rain water plus a bit of source water but they don't look great. They are alive though. Just my experience. I expect crypts like an acidic substrate lower PH than I can give them and my rain water may be to void of anything they need.

I have a aged tank it's had all kinds of creatures and what i've noticed is that when my tank is overstocked, as it is currently. the nitrates build up and become acidic. I've always run a non reactive substrate, the tap water comes out 200+ppm gh. when i tested my tank i realized that i had no KH, and my hardness was still 200ppm+ aside from the obvious, water changes, i've started using a little crushed coral (or aragonite) this insn't going to solve my ph issue, but just give me some time until my 110 is cycled :) tldr: Nitrates can cause low pH even if the water is 200+ppm gH

So, how do I lower the pH only? Do I have to go for RO water, or CO2? Or is there a cheaper (and less of a hassle) option?

I am in Philadelphia, my hardness is good, but low ph in my tap water, I noticed my plants were melting like crazy or just dying off, my local fish store me told me to up my ph with crushed coral, my ph was tested by myself and store to be at 6.5, so I bought some coral and I will be doing that this weekend, I’ll let ya know of the results if you want, and be a while to see how plants are doing.

Yeah, I coulda told you all that 😋When you were like "plants have trouble in hard water", I was like "Huh? Maybe he's struggling with ph or doesn't know that there are hard water plants and softer water plants?" I have hard water and ph can be a bitch, though as you mention, it has little to do with gh. In fact, soft water plants grow fine in hard water and may even appreciate the extra mineral content; Meanwhile, hard water plants like hornwart do poorly in soft water or may even die, and even jungle val may do poorly because even though ph in substrates tend toward neutral over time, hard water plants foliar feed certain nutrients, and many of them feed on bicarbonates (alkalinity) for their carbon source rather than just relying on co2 gas. Kh on the other hand can effect ph, though that's where I've had some difficulty, since you can end up bottoming out kh in order to control ph, and you need a decent amount of kh for buffering, especially if injecting co2 for soft water plants. To make matters worse, some of your carbonates can convert to bicarbonates or vise versa so that it can be hard to keep kh from being too high. But yeah, I don't know if I sound smart, but I'm not exactly a chemist or an aquatic ecologist, so I'm still more often than naught feeling like a monkey on a football trying to figure this out. One of the better options might be to make your own hard water by starting with RO, rain, or distilled water and adding calcium carbonate, magnesium sulfate (epsom salt), potassium chloride powder (you can get this at a health food place), and perhaps combining that with a store bought RO reconstitute that adds trace elements to the water. If alkalinity bottoms out, add baking soda. Of course if you go with hard water plants and animals, many of them can take higher ph.

Thankyou so much, this put my mind at ease when thinking about setting up a new planted aquarium, my PH is around 7.6 so hope I will be OK. Do you have any recommendations of what I could do if I spot any problems? My pH is 7.6 and GH is 17, KH is 6

Interesting! I have low KH, moderate to low PH, and hard water. Due to having such a low KH I have to be really careful not to add too much drift wood or calcium containing rocks. I can't keep most stem plants alive. I have a couple crypts that seem to be doing well, as well as some S repens. My red roots did not do well...but my frogbit is thriving. I am thinking, if I add more mystery snails, they may aid in absorbing calcium? Hopefully, this will be helpful as shrimp simply will not survive. I also go rid of all of my white veined rocks. I'm looking into getting dragon stone or possibly smooth river rocks instead. Any thoughts? Thanks!

Being a natural substance, eggshells likely raise both pH and hardness? How are you adding only calcium and not calcium carbonate?

Interesting video. I have hard water and a ph of 8.2. Only plant so far that have thrived in my aquarium is dwarf sag that is planted in eco earth. Java fern and Anubias petite have all died. That’s with dosing ferts once a week and really good lighting. Would adding co2 help fix the issue or would I be better off getting a ro/di system and mixing that with my tap water?

I am having the same issue in my tank now where my ph is 6 and gh is like 300ppm i am trying to raise kh which is 0 to raise ph to see if their will be positive affect on my plants and fish

very good info. I never thought about the fact that my ph might be lower down in the substrate than it is in the water column. I have about 3 inches of organic soil capped with about 2 inches of small grained sand for my cory cats and a variety of botias. I'm assuming that down in that earthy mix of organic soil the ph is low. My parameters are ph= 7.5, kh=5°, Gh=19°(super high) temp 80°, gallons 75, the tank is dirted and planted and about 6 years old. I looked at your video because I am exploring the water softening pillows by API. I'm concerned about my scaless fish and the sodium the product may put back into the water. Of course API (Mars) will not answer their phone number that they publish due to covid. I think that excuse is getting a little old. If all else fails I will just go back to adding distilled water to my water changes and try to slowly bring the GH down. Any thoughts?

My ph out of my tap is 7.8 but over time in the tank it goes up to 8.0 is that because of evaporation? I don't have lids on my tank. I live near the ocean so my water has very high gh and kh. I couldn't grow water fern floating in my water at all. I also have a big peace lily growing out of the tank- 0 nitrates- I think it is sucking up all the nutrients out of the water so no floating plants have been able to live. Except Anubias does great. Java fern shrinks in size and withers away. Crypt Wendii does fine. The bacopa and water wisteria seem ok but haven't had then long.

Iv got high ph and hard water. It's all about how balanced your tank is too via bio load and bacteria build up. Hard water tanks will suffer from to much nutrients. Iv got well water that's got iron copper magnesium phosphorus (alot of plant fertilizers) that go in every water change I make 😢. I needed a bigger filter and more plants with longer water change intervals. I just let the plants do there thing now not just pile nutrients on top of more with water changes

I put dead coral in my aquatic tank, but the plant don't seems to grow same as they previously did. Then i do 100% water change and now the plant (rotala) are melting.

How did you lower your pH without changing your kh?

I have a low ph and the water tests beyond the scale for hardness even though my tap water doesn't . I'm guessing now that the rock I have in it is limestone.

my gh is 14 and my ph is 8 how can i lower it and keep it low?

What plants would do well in higher ph if you have to keep higher ph animals? 7.5-8.5

is o2/aeration rising up the PH?

See I have soft water with a ph of 7. It took me a minute to figure it as well. I love those crypts that are behind you.

👌👌👌❤❤❤

Knew i was in the right place the minute i heard the accent

whelp... welcome to the grow game lol

I’ve got a confusing situation here. My tap water comes in with GH of 12+ and pH 7.8 or more. However, kH is only 3 . I have no idea what’s going on here, could someone shed some light on this? Everywhere I check, people say that pH and kH are directly linked (more kH leads to higher pH) so I’m not sure what is causing my pH to go so high. Also, what plants / fish would thrive in these water conditions? Currently I’m ROing the water and using it for my neon and cherry planted tank, wanted to see if it was worth setting up a new tank (15gallon at the max) to match my water parameters.

Hard to grow in hard water ??? Mine are crazyy and my water is very hard with 1000ppm Gh and 8.0 pH lol 😂😂😅

Have you been hitting the gym? Looks like you lost Weight