The Hard Water Planted Aquarium & Everything You Want To Know! 

This is the BEST aquarium video I have ever seen Dave.

after almost 4 years, still the best video on hardwater planted tanks!

Man. This guy is so knowledgeable. I’ve never heard anyone pronounce the name of plants and fishes as easily as he has done.

DAMN Dave ALWAYS on top just can't explain how good overall your videos are every-thing! PERFECT

The shrimp in the foreground took a dump at 3:00. Cool-haha!

This tank is really lovely! great job!

Dude, great video. I'm probably going to have to watch this line 12 more times to memorize all this content. I actually just bought my gory batch of plants and planted a 20 gal for fun. So... I'm gona really need this info as I go along. Thanks for the great video and advice!

This is a really helpful video for those of us with hard water. I subscribe to the theory that it is better to be consistent than to strive to have soft water, so I live with the hard water and have been successful with many of the plants and fish you mentioned, though I don't have any cichlids. I prefer nano fish and so do have several rasbora species. Thanks again!

Thank you so much, I haven't been able to find much information about growing plants in hard water! This helps a lot.

thank you Dave ,my water is liquid rock too and I'm just getting in to aquarium plants

Thank you so much for this very informative video. I was ready to give up onmy planted tank, but will continue to try with the help of the info you provide in your videos. Your tanks are beautiful.

Very informative video. Thanks for sharing :)

Beginner to the hobby here - your videos are the best I've found on youtube, super informative, but still clear enough to follow if you're not armed with years of experience. Subscribed for more, thanks!

Really interesting facts about hard water aquarium.

Another quality video Dave. I have hard water , and I have found that dwarf sag is doing pretty well in there, along with the cryps and anubias :)

That plant tank is badass!!

Wow this video is crazy good. Thank you so much!

just subbed, thank you for taking the time to make these great videos. they have helped alot....

the best in depth video iv seen more more

Nice informative video as usual. The footage on this video is impressive.

Great quality video. Information and picture.

Great video! !

Recently became a sub and thank you for the information. I live in Las Vegas I know liquid rock. looking forward to more videos and will check out more older ones. plants another story for another time but finally starting to find Balance and Potass is key. took me long enough

your videos are really helpful thanks!

You've helped so many aquascapiers, you should have a donate now button.

excellent video - 5 stars!! While all those scientific /latin names boggle my mind, it's great to know them and hear them pronounced effortlessly! And thanks for always slipping in the common retail names, as well! ;-)

That was awesome! Thank you.

I really like this video, it gave me some ideas on what to do with my tank that has had hard water ever since I've started my planted tank out I've tried almost everything except RO water is a little too pricey for me so I am now growing hard water plants and keeping hard water fish!

When I started my first planted tank, I didn't know that aquarium water is supposed to be Ro or something. I just figured that if I can grow plants on my window sill, they will grow in water too. And that was what happened. I was pulling out a bucket of plants every weekend. Then I couldn't have an aquarium for several years but I read a lot of stuff. Now I know much more but somehow starting my new aquarium is much more difficult. Either these new plants are different (previous ones I bought from a person who had his aquariums for 4 decades and now new ones came from shop and were imported) or there is something different in the water. Also in my old aquarium substrate was granite gravel and how I have some soil. Well, I will see how it goes.

Awesome video

Thanks for this video. I have very hard water and was wondering which plants were suitable.

Excellent stuff.

Another great video. I've got liquid rock where I live too.

our water is also "liquid rock" with 9ph 18 dGH 9 KH. I wanted to have a planted tank way back when I started out. I went and got some anubias nana's, java moss, corkscrew vals and finally some ambulia. On top of that I went and chose rocks because I liked the way they looked... I later realized they were the kind of rocks that leech carbonates into the water... so you can guess what direction this tank was taking LOL. So what I'm saying is that I can only confirm all your shared experience/knowledge . so Thanks Dave

thank you again for this video keep upp that good work

thank you....this does help a lot...my water is pretty much the exact same here in Taos, NM. So far my java fern and moss are growing well...as long as my marsilea hirsuta. I did add in a dirt substrate capped with ant hill gravel and I also added some sagebrush sticks. so far so good! I am still deciding on fish or anything else...I thought snails would do fine also.

I'm just starting out in the fish keeping hobby. I have a 20 gal long. My tap water is well water & super hard water(gH^, kH^, pH^). The only types of plants I have in my tank are Java fern & Amazon swords. The Java fern is doing really well I even have some baby ferns growing from the main plant. My swords r hanging in there. I have the fluval aqua soil for my substrate and a couple of Mopai driftwood pieces. I fertilize once a week maybe every 2 with Seachem Flourish. A week ago I added 6 zebra danios (2 have since past) & 3 black racer nerite snails. I want to add a few more fish to my tank but I don't want to kill any fish bc of my hard water & high pH. This video is so helpful and has given me some good ideas. Thanks so much for posting this!

I have hard water here, too, About 365 ppm, so I use reverse Osmosis. But rather than use pure reverse osmosis, I put about a pint of tap water in a gallon jug and then fill it up with R.O. The reason I do that is because Calcium and Magnesium are necessary nutrients, so I keep some in for the good of my plants. Then I dose with flourish to help replace the trace element that are scarce in hard water. So far I've had pretty good success. I'm growing Crypt Balansae, crypt Wendtii, Rotala rotundifolia. Alternanthera Reinecki mini, Hygro bipinnatifida, Madagascar lace, dwarf sag, and Pogostemon Helferi. I've just added Crypt undulata, Mayaca fluvialis, and Alternanthera Reinecki rosanervig, but those are too new to say whether they are successful. ... I agree with you about trying out a lot of different plants, keeping those that work, and throwing out those that don't. Often, what grows for my neighbor won't grow for me, and what everyone says shouldn't grow in my water grows like a weed for me. You never really know until you try it for yourself.

That intro is 🔥

i just found this channel. this channel is great!👍👍👍👍👍

fantastic video. I have hard water as well. Had great success with Vals, anubias as well and others but I am starting a new tank soon and have been rethinking the new tank.

great info. My water is hard as well.

nice info man really liked your aquascape.

I'm new to your channel. Great info. I really love the science you bring to most of your videos. I was wondering what you recommend for a hard water low tech carpeting/ ground cover type plant? I was looking at dwarf sag, but I was wondering what else you'd recommend

The only moss I have been having a lot of success with in a hard water tank is Taiwan Moss... At first I was thinking it was withering away on me. Now, I have more Taiwan Moss than I can handle. I am able to make a carpet and wall with it easily.

Great vid. Those tanks look incredible. I've been trying new plants. You know... branching out. 😐

Awesome video man! Your glossostigma carpet looks amazing. I've been experimenting with it lately with moderate success. Do you have any advice on how to make glosso happy?

There was a little too much chemistry in this for my comprehension, but I appreciated the tips on fish and plant species for hard water. I have moderately hard water (Missouri), and have found hornwort, cryptocoryne, and subwassertang grow like weeds in my tanks; anubias, bacopa, and bucephalandra also do well.

That rainbow though 😍

wow never knew lol your great coming from nz (;

well this was like watching national geographic and made me feel really stupid. LOL. However I do grow the plants that I CAN grow and don't usually re buy the ones that dont do all that well. Watching all the pics of your old scapes was a trip and cool to see how you progressed. Very impressive dude. PEACE OUT

This was a good video for me. Just starting out. Got one small tank, soon to have another and a 30gal. Main focus is scaping but of course i've started to love the fish, especially clean up crews. Am trying to stay away from RO but bought one just in case. Good to hear about the ,now familiar to my ears, plants and that they came from hard water. Am going to use co2 and some flourish products, have aquasoil on the way for my 30 gal. Thanks for good info . The only thing i would suggest is to have a video of your tanks with numbers on the screen relating to the plants and a list in the info area of the name of the plant so a person can go look it up. If you've already done that and i just haven't come across it than great. Thanks for the info and effort

Thank you for all the videos man , very informative . i want to buy a R/O unit but does that mean i have to remineralize the water . my tap water gh & kh are off the chart, will mixing tap and r/o water give me a batter balance ? any info will help tons . thanks

Great info as always Dave. You said any hygro...even the pinnatifada? In hard water?

I've struggled to keep anything over a 10 gallon dirted planted tank alive and flourishing. I keep dealing with algae (regardless of dosing Seachem Excel, No CO2), due to what I believe to be excess nutrients but my plants grow erratically. I have tried adjusting the lighting (I use Finnex fugeray Fixtures) in both overall duration as well as height above the tank. The problematic tank is a 40B dirted with Miracle Grow and capped with sand. The plants I have are: Rotala R., Dwarf Sag, Amazon Sword, Ludwigia Repens, Cabomba, and Cryp Wendtii. They are all relatively easy plants to grow, but I cannot find success with them regardless of the adjustments that I have made. I believe myself to by decently educated on the biology and chemistry behind planted tanks, and even in your technical videos I am able to listen and digest all of the information. However, I do have hard water and I am starting to believe it impossible to keep a nice planted tank unless I invest in an RO system because at this point I've spent more money Overdosing Excel to the point where I could have bought an RO system and still have some left over. I'm a bit discouraged at this point so I guess these are just unfiltered thoughts, but the message that I'm trying to convey is: should I invest in an RO system? I plan on redoing the entire tank, and have bought a separate 40B just to make the process easier and keep my fish alive and healthy, but before I make the same mistakes, I want some input regarding the path I should take in order to have the greatest possibility for success. I have even thought about ADA amazonia, but I do not know the truth longegivity of it, or if it would be worth doing without CO2.. I guess eventually I'll cave and get a nice CO2 system as well but I feel these decisions need to made sequentially in order to justify the purchase.

Please give me advice on Cyprus helferi grass I love it but am having such a hard time in my dirted tanks I’m think from the sand cap?

I've found that guppies do very well in hard water my PH is around 8.0 and my guppies do great

Great explanations ,more please!

My Dwarf Mexican Crayfish enjoy had water too.

My water is extremely hard too. I've been using Carib Sea sand with Seachem root tabs, but plants are not thriving and they're actually dying. Does sand have anything to do with it, in this case?

I'm setting up a very hard water planted tank,no CO2,would it be good to dose flourish comprehensive and potassium,anything else apart from root tabs.thankyou.

hey there, that background with your tank you said you had no idea what you were doing, where did you buy that? It looks beautiful!

excellent vid, one of the best tech vids i have seen.

I too have hard water ...can you tell me how and when to dose flourish / potassium / excel how many times in a week & more info for a 150 gallon tank on what lights to be used

I have liquid rock with a low ph of 6.0 what plants are best for this combo

HI Dave, what bottom feeders or Algae Eaters would you recommend in a hard water set-up?.

Thanks! My tap water(ground water) is yellowish-little red in color. It's sure hard water but never tested the water. I have low tech planted tank without CO2. Can I dose only KNO3 weekly and micro(Fe etc)?

bucephalandras might also work in hard water I have hard water and looking to biuld a tank only with Bolbitis, Anubias, trident fern, Java fern and bucephalandra.. Maybe some S. repens and Vall

Wow you have vids on literally everything about planted tanks. Would bucephalandra do well in hard water?

At 9:12 in the video what is the name of the small leafed plant with the shrimp on top?

Guppy guppy guppy. Also, I tried swordtails and they died for God knows why, but I was also accidentally given a Rosy Tetra instead of one of the swordtails, and it actually survived. After the swordtails died, I got 2 more of the Rosys and although one eventually died, the other two did and are still doing good over a month afterword, and they've colored up nicely. GH=180, KH=240, PH=7.5-8

when you say phosfate causing algae is a myth, so can I use alkaline/acid regulator to control my ph, since it has phosfato in its composition?

Hello, I am a have very little experience with fish. I have two Oranda goldfish, one is orange/gold and the other "was" black. I upgraded from a 30 gallon tank to a 75 gallon tank. Water parameters remained about the same. Next day after I transferred my fish to the new tank my black goldfish turned silver, 2 other little ones that had black on them lost their pigmentation . Do you have any idea what could have happened for them to change color overnight?

will buce grow in hard water ?? will dosing of nutrition work in hard water without co2 ??

Dave, if i use aquasoil with water of 7.2- 7.4pH will my aquarium suffer from ph swings when i do water changes?

Do the snails bother you? I just found 5 snails in my tank this past week, pretty sure I got it from the moss I purchased :(

First of all great video... I have hard water of ph arnd 7.6 to 7.8 does that mean that adding Co2 is basically useless as it would not dissolve easily. I have a fluval co2 indicator but that always stays at blue... I am running arnd one bubble per second of co2 for arnd 7 hours a day. Please let me know...

as always, great Informative video! I have tap water that's 9ph 10kh & 10dkh. The plants that I have managed to grow under these conditions (without dosing & adding co2) are Anubias nana, Cryptocoryne, java moss and ambulia . the latter of which had the fastest plant growth. I haven't tried to carpet anything under these conditions, perhaps I will try dwarf hairgrass as you mentioned in your video. thx!

If dosing Potassium and Flourish Comprehensive in hard water, do you think Dwarf Baby Tears and Pogostemon Helferi would thrive in a hard water environment?

Who thought keeping some fish would be easy? answer . . me ha, where I live the tap water that I use is very hard water (230ppm) and understanding how to go about either softening the water or treating the hard water is becoming an open university course in itself, fishkeeping is not so much about keeping fish but rather keeping water

I am 8 months in with my planted tank. (and still confused) I have very hard water (13 kh, 22 gh whatever that means) and my ph is 8.0 to 8.2. If I add co2, will that lower ph AND correct the hardness and kh? Also been looking at GLA PPS-Pro ferts but noticed some of those ferts raise hardness, so maybe I shouldn't add some of those ferts in that kit? Tom

The list of hard water plants was dead on. Every plant you mentioned thrives in my water...what you did not mention..are dead. What mosses..besides Java..can thrive in hard water? Any other plants you want to add four years later?

My water is so hard, it surprises me that it even makes it up the hill from the lake to my home.

Some people are telling me to always keep the fish in its natural water parameters and others are telling me to not worry about that but just keep my tank water parameters consistent (regardless of what they are). What do I do?

What do you add to your Ro water ADU?

Hi I've bought an aquarium 53g,I have water like your liquid rock, I intend to keep a group of blyth river rainbows, firstly what bottom feeders wod you recommend, also I'm heavily planting it with crypts, vallis etc, I've been told to dose iron for crypts, would that help with excel, patassium, it will be low tech, and can I use tropica substrate capped with a fine gravel.. Thank-you

Can anyone recommend any plants that do well in hard water for a low tech tank?

hi mate I have a few tanks I breed mollys and platys and they like hard water with a bit of salt but I use bog wood and branches will they make my water acid I use water life 7.0 with a buffer I use wood to grow my moss and anubias and java fern on it i don't use a lot of it my substrate is tetra complete for the bottom and tetra active for the top what would be the best way to scape my tanks if I take my wood out cheers happy fish keeping

can you list the fish in this tank? I've been looking for a smaller hardwater fish in the gray/silver color family to contrast with my platies.

I read that high magnesium levels may actually be correlated with potassium deficiency, an potassium uptake is difficult for plants with magnesium levels above a certain amount. Is this why we should dose more potassium? Is there any way to decrease magnesium amounts without using an RO system?? Thanks!

Do you have any idea guys what I can use for extremely hard water? (NK30). I was thinking about Endler guppies and cherry shrimps. As my research says, they can handle this hardness.

my water is ph 8.2 and not sure about kh and gh but i think its hard...i want to have african cichlids for my 32 gallon...how many cichlids can i add and what varieties? could someone please advice?

i cant do RO right now so am using the tap water here in Kerns, its just as hard as Payson water. So far it is very frustrating! Except the mosses and anubius. Those are growing quite well. Tank is 6 weeks old, am using high light the par chart says i should be about 120 at substrate. Using Floramax substrate with osmacoat plus. Dry firts from greenleaf aquariums using EI daily method but doubling the amount for potassium and plantex csm +B. Using the calculator at rotalla butterfly for CO2 i supposedly have 37ppm co2 an hour into the photo period and most plants pearl like crazy. Most plants seem to be in suspended animation of sorts. Hygro corymbosa hasn't grown a new leaf since i put the 3 stems in a month ago. I had 3 emersed amazon swords. 2 of them died back as they should but then created 1 or 2 new submerged leaves that just died a week or 2 later. I now have 1 sword plant and it seems to be growing new leaves but slower then ive ever seen a sword do. The crypts are doing ok but very very slow. The Monte Carlo seemed to come out of shock and started creating runners 2 weeks ago but now are melting again. The Jungle val doesn't seem like Jungle val because its only grown 2 new runners in 6 weeks. ammania gracilis started to convert then faded away and the scarlet temple is still in emergent growth form after 3 weeks. I think the only reason my tank isnt an algae bomb is because of the 6.5 hour photo period and the fact i seeded my filter with a sponge from a friends tank. I am hoping that once the substrate matures and there are more bacteria to help breakdown nutrients the plants will start to come around. Fingers crossed.....

whats that little stripy fish you have which looks like a bumblebee?

All fish are intelligent

Can you grow red plants in hard water? Like ludwigia, rotala

My api master test kit is reading darker than 7.6 ph (more tham maximum) on regular and lighter than 7.4ph (less than minimum) on high range ph, any ideas what's going on?

What would cause a PH of 8.5 on tap water that is like a 3KH? They are adding phosphates to the water to reduce pipe corosion?

were did you get the plant and wood for your tank

How do you avoid calcium buildup on the glass of the aquarium?