Can salvinia reduce hardness?

Lazaro777

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Aug 31, 2021
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I came across this article talking about how salvinia molesta can "suck up" lead and mercury, if I understand it correctly.


Was wondering if that happens magnesium and calcium too.

Although I personally have salvinia minima in my tank, perhaps I could anecdotally measure my hardness after a period of time and compare it to tap.
 

Lazaro777

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Actually just came across this. It's about water hyacinth however. Does figure 5 and figure 9 elude to reduction in hardess? Also, could this possibly apply to salvinia minima?

 

Allwissend

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Plants do use up some magnesium and a little calcium, so they affect the hardness to some extent over a long enough period of time. That being said, in aquariums with weekly water changes you are less likely to see dramatically different GH values at the end of the week from plant uptake. So don't expect to go from 10 °dGH to 2 °dGH in one week with plants alone.
On the other hand, bioaccumulation of heavy metals is great in that very small concentrations of those metals can hurt the fauna of a lake and plants can concentrate those metals to many times their environmental concentration. If those heavy metal concentrations are high plants also won't be able to cope with them
 

Lazaro777

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I came across this sticky post in this forum which was what I was going for:

https://barrreport.com/threads/non-co2-methods.2792/

Basically a non co2 method and encouraged no water changes.

Later, I came across Mr. Barr addressing the constant topping off with hard water and people's concern that this will gradually increase the hardness:

https://www.plantedtank.net/threads/how-many-of-you-follow-the-no-water-change-rule.652258/

In post #31 he states:

Plants take up the TDS as ferts, as Ca, as KH, as Mg, as N, P, K etc, those are all parts/fractions of the TDS, it does not accumulate if you set the tank up correctly. When you trim and remove some plant biomass, you export.

What goes in, comes out.

Now if you add say 5 discus in and feed them like mad, add a few vals in the back, nope, that's not going to work on a 40 Gallon tank.

Now if you had say a 90 Gallon, had ample floating plants, a sump with more emergent plants growing in there with good lighting, then you might be able to handle that.
 

Lazaro777

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Went to local pet-chain store and got a water test.

The one with the lower hardness is tap water. I guess that can be like a control.

The one with the harder water is the aquarium water. Granted it's been about two years since a water change.
 

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Lazaro777

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Here are a couple pictures of my tank. The surface is filled with salvinia minima that is scooped out periodically. The plants in the tank are epiphytes such as, various java ferns, Bolbitis heudelotii and some buce.

Perhaps stem plants grow fast enough to keep the water soft. Being I have non, perhaps that's why hardness accumulates after awhile. Also, perhaps the fast growing salvinia prevented the water from being even harder.

Also, I think the municipal's water hardness varies due to how much rain occured during the year. I have to check that however.

Any thoughts? Mind you I was going the non CO2 method mentioned in that respective part of the forum.
 

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