Alan Silver wrote:
Hello,

I'm just contemplating setting up a cichlid tank. Unlike my tropical
tank (which has very soft, slightly acidic water), this will require
hard water of pH around 8. I am interested in knowing what plants are
going to be happy in these conditions.

Preferably I would like plants that do not require high lighting as I am
trying to keep costs down a little ;-(

Thanx for any info.

There's oodles of plants that will do fine in hard water. The "classics"
are java fern, java moss, crypts and anubias. The plus with those is most
of them also do well with moderate lighting. In my rift lake tank (which
has way more that pH of 8 before CO2 injection), I have java ferns, crypts
and Aponogeton bulbs. The crypts suffered a bit and had a typical
meltdown, but they're coming back now. The java ferns have grown like
crazy. I had a bit of java moss tangled up on one of the java ferns when I
bought them, but the moss never really took. It wasn't very health looking
to begin with though. The Aponogeton bulbs are doing great as well. One of
them is massive with leaves trailing across the top of the water (great
fry cover). It has been sending off flower stalks like crazy of late. The
others are moderately sized, but put out new leaves regularly.

I haven't taken any pictures lately (and won't be for a while due to a
roommate induced tank disaster a couple weeks ago), but you can go to the
following webpage and compare how the plants looked originally and then
how much they'd grown a couple months later:

http://www.shwaine.com/fish_40g.html