reply and another question, re: r/o water
No plants are guaranteed snail free that I have ever seen.
Nitrates really don't get out of hand until 80-100 ppm (this varies by opinion though). Most of us try to keep them under 40.
If you can't avoid high nitrates, then your fish will be fine, although they may not thrive as well as in a super clean system.
What is your nitrate reading in the tank? If you use straight tap, and your reading is higher than 15-20 you're only going to reduce it. If the reading is less than 15-20, then your nitrates will go up slightly.
Water sprite does okay in low light, I would recommend T5s if you want it to really use up a sizable amount of nitrate though. What is your lighting?
Both plants are stem plants, so they are easy to trim and remove over growth. If you trim some off periodically it won't outgrow the tank. Just a simple snip of scissors on the stem will trim it, then you plant the part with roots.
Ultimately, doing larger PWCs with a mixture of tap/distilled water will allow for larger replenishment of trace nutrients per PWC, and most likely reduce total nitrates (unless your plants uptake more nitrate than your fish produce, which seems unlikely with those plants but would depend on stock).
Nitrates IHMO are fine, generally controlled to 20 or so, but I am told by some this is too high.... therefore, the doubt.
Lighting is low, 10 watt "SunGlo" tank lights.... 2 of them in an All Glass Hood / 10G tank.
What are T5's ?? Will check out water sprite as well... I only have 1 betta in the (10G) tank.
I ended up letting the LFS talk me into R/O water, however they told me I do not need to use a water treatment, no chlorine in it, but that I do NOT need to add trace elements / minerals.... which does not make sense. How can you filter out nitrates, chlorine, etc and leave the trace elements and minerals intact.......he said it was the type of membrane they use and that this is filtered water...but not safe for "drinking" being the difference between aquarium water and R/O filtered waterused for drinking.
i added prime anyway after a 50 % pwc and I started thinking about it. I also looked up on line about R/O and am a bit confused. What little information I was able to find, re R/O for aquarium use, all advocated replenishing the minerals / elements / nutrients, i.e. "
Kent's R/O Right" for example.
As I understood the LFS guy, they purify it there? They had 5 gallon square, plastic jugs, and I could either bring my own container or purchase theirs and come back for refills at .25 / G (cheaper than distilled anyway after the first round)...
Do I need to get some kind of product, i.e. Kent's R/O Right or something?