Vallisneria and soft water

[CassCats]

Theres some crypts that may be okay that are like vals name of the species escapes me right now though

 

[StevenF]

I stumbled across someone on a forum suggesting that val will struggle in soft water. Oh no, I thought, I have soft water. I couldn't corroborate that information, though, as plant sites just said that it's an easy plant to grow.

Does anyone know? I feed the plants Seachem Flourish Comprehensive once per week. That gives them minerals, right?

all pants need calcium and magnesium to grow. If you don't have enough growth may be very slow or the plant may die. Flourish Comprehensive and most other fertilizers on the market either don't have it or simply don't have enough. Most fertilizers do have magnesium but in my opinion most don't have enough Ideally you want magnesium and phosphate to be about equal with calcium about 3 times higher.

The GH test only detects calcium and magnesium. In theory one degree of hardness should be enough for plants but sometimes it is not. Most people tend to aim for a GH of 3 to 6 degrees. Use a GH booster to increase the hardness of your water.

Note it is not unusual for fertilizer to not include all nutrients plants need. Most people don't believe Chlorine is a plant nutrient but it is Now the hloriine gas or chloramine used in tap water is toxic but chloride salts such as calcium chloride are safe. Some fertilizers don't have copper which is in your tap water due to copper pipes. and most fertilizers don't have nickel and are deficient in Zinc. Basically most fertilizer manufactures assume your water has the nutrients that they don't add. Sometimes they are correct but sometimes they are not.

If you have a nutrient deficiency in your tank you likely will have algae. If all nutrients are present algae's a lot easier to control

How do Iknow this? I spent 5 years trying to figure out why I had dificultygrowing plants and had an easy time growing hair algae. I have a aquarium filled RO/DI water and I had an inert substrate. So no nutrients from my water or substrate and Flourish comprehensive didn't work from me. I resolved the problem by making my own fertilizer. Most of my problem was mostly due to Boron, Zinc, Copper, and molybdenum deficiency.

 

[Gypsum]

I have so little algae in that tank that I moved my otos into one that had more. The big leafy plant I had was growing like crazy until we changed the tank into a pleco breeding tank and added the powerheads. Apparently lots of leafy plants don't like currents.