Seattle_Aquarist

Hi Prometheus,

When I lived in the Midwest I had alkaline water and had trouble with water sprite. I found that once the tank "aged", and became more acid, the watersprite would "take off".

The question I keep asking myself is why you PH is so high? Do you have high PH from the tap or does the PH go up after the water is in the tank? If your tap water is high PH you should be able to lower the PH with very small doses of sodium biphosphate (it is what is in the PH lowering containers on the LFS shelves). If the PH goes up after the water is added to your tank, even though you are using distilled water, then I would suspect high dissolvable mineral content in your substrate, decorative rocks, or ornaments. Hope this helps.

Prometheus

Hi!

Oh, nice picture.. I have ("had") the kind with the bigger leaves...

Well the pH is very high from the tap maybe 9 or 10. I also had added oyster grit because the water here is soft... but I've asked about this in other posts and it seemed like the high pH in my tank was from the HOB which was driving the co2 out of the water.

When I first got the water sprite it wasn't in great shape. Then soon after I added it to my tank, it spread all over. But at some point I started adding this distilled water to try to decrease the pH so the water level was really high and close to the light. Later I noticed that the water sprite was losing its bright green color. I thought it was getting burned by being so close to the light but I figured it would be okay if the water level dropped a bit. Unfortunately when I got back it disappeared! Now I'm trying to salvage this one leaf!

I am tempted to think that the distilled water maybe the cause. I was under the impression that water sprite doesn't have problems with CO2 since it has access to co2 in the air and that is why it has an advantage over other plants.

Well, I am hoping it will start to grow in the tap water. And then maybe one day it will once again try to take over the world! I'll be watching closely. hehe

HeyPK

It is interesting to see that Boston tap water is alkaline. When I was there in the 60's it was soft and acidic, and it had around 5 ppm of dissolved copper from the pipes, effectively killing snails in a half hour and fish in three days. I think that the water treatment plants must have started adding something to make it alkaline so that it didn't dissolve the pipes so much. Usually, water treatment plants add lime to solve the problem.

Prometheus

yes definately.. Now it's soft and alkaline