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Hi Loh, thanks for your warm welcome.
It is a pleasure for me to participate to this beautiful forum.
Growing aquarium plants has been my principal interest/hobby since I was 9-10 years old (more or less 25 years ago).
Few years ago I also managed for a while a small firm cultivating and selling aquarium plants to local shops/wholesalers.
The aquaria scene in Italy is not that good, in comparison to Singapore, but it is going better in the last few years.
The main problem in my opinion is (besides ignorance about plant needs) water quality.
For what concerns ignorance a great help has been given by the increasing diffusion of internet (and forums).
For what concerns water quality I give as an example some parameters of the tap water in my area:
Conductivity: 800-1000 microSiemens
Alcalinity: 35° dKH
Total Hardness: 25° dGH
As you can imagine growing plants in such conditions is not easy at all.
Even if there are areas blessed with soft water most of Italy has hard-very hard water.
Most of the people are not available to buy and use reverse osmosis or mixed bed resins filters.
The major problem for plants in hard water is iron availability and the fertilizers on the market (except probably just one) use iron poorly chelated (with EDTA or even worse gluconate)and are not suitable for this type of water.
What happens hence is that most of the people that want to keep an aquarium have to buy demineralized water (not always of a great quality) from the shops.
Consider the troubles you face if you have to go and buy 100 l of water to the shop (for about 25 Sing. dollars) and trasport it home when you want to do a water change.
Consider also that you have usually to reserve the water few days before.
In this situation keeping a thank is so troublesome that usually people (unless they are really enthusiastic/motivated) ends up with having tanks with only fishes and few anubias.
Shops also usually keep only plants that in their experience are more resistent (die later than others).
The next step will usually be dismounting everything to put the tank in the closet/garage or giving it as a present to someone.
Luckily in the last few years the reverse osmosis filters have become cheaper and cheaper and so I hope that, with their increased diffusion also in the families for drinking water, the situation will get constantly better.
Of course the availability of good water is fundamental for being successful and success motivates to go on.
Lucky you that live in Singapore and that have access to good water straight from the tap.
Last time I was in Singapore I stayed in a residence in Hougang area where the conductivity of tap water was 70 microSiemens; in this conditions was very easy to keep the plants I bought alive for more than one months until my return home.
Best regards and bye.
We're delighted that you like this forum and we hope you will become a regular here. If there's anything I can do for you, please do not hesitate to ask. Would you like to try growing the various mosses? If you let me have your mailing address, I can send you some.
Originally Posted by baruch mor
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