# Where's my water sprite?



## Prometheus (Feb 12, 2008)

I left for a month of vacation and I've had my roomate top off the tank with distilled water since my pH was so high. When I got back nearly all the water sprite disappeared. The tank was covered with water sprite before! Now there are only a few sad pieces with little to no roots at all. I was thinking maybe this could be because the water level was kept pretty high and close to the light...I have a HOB filter (which i'm going to replace with a power head today) so I wanted to keep the water high. ...but now even as I've let it drop, I haven't seen any growth at all with the water sprite. There's been some algae growth though! Whats going on with the water sprite? It was multiplying like crazy before. pH is still really high and I can't keep it down despite the distilled water....

aside from this one of my killifish looks like it's going to kick the bucket soon too.  He is still eating but looks less active and his tail seems to drop below the rest of his body.  The rest of the fish look great and there has been other plant growth. I can't seem to revive the water sprite though.

Any ideas?


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## bgzbgz (Jul 6, 2007)

Maybe ur roommate got hungry? Just kidding. 
But seriously the only time I seen water sprite dissappear was when I put it in a goldfish tank where it got eaten.


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## rohape (Feb 7, 2005)

The only thing I can think of is since you were using distilled water, all the metals were removed and there was not enough metals (iron, calcium, etc.) in the water that your water sprite simply died. 
Have you asked your roommate what had happened?
Try putting normal tap water back in. Fish can adjust to gradual Ph changes. It's the drastic changes that hurt them. 
What is your current Ph?


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## Prometheus (Feb 12, 2008)

I don't have goldies but yes, my roomate is a vegetarian. :hat: 
she doesnt' know much about aquariums so she wouldn't know what happened. The other plants grew a lot so I suspect she didn't eat them 

ok, I will definately take it out and put it in a glass of tap water for now, since I dont' have any prime left. I hope it works because there is only one leaf left! I'll see what happens. Last time I had the guy at the pet store test it and I think it was 8.5 or 9...so some people here suggested I add distilled. I dont' think the distilled water helped (maybe because of the HOB, even though the water level was kept high.... my pH test kit at home doesn't go so high, so I don't know the exact pH now but it still gives me the highest color reading. 

poor water sprite!!!!!


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## rohape (Feb 7, 2005)

I should have been a little more clear about the tap water. I meant like a water change. Add some of the needed metals back to the water column. Or go ahead and put it in a bowl/cup and either set it in a window, or outside. It should take off especially outside. Like a nano pond. 
I fought with high Ph too. I just gave up. So far no issues with fish or plants. It's been about a year that I gave up trying to keep the Ph in check. Not too sure what my Ph is right now.


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## Prometheus (Feb 12, 2008)

yea, I got what you meant, but I have to buy more prime before I do that. For now I put it in the window. I actually have some watersprite outside in a pot with a mosquito fish.. and it hasn't grown .. it's been in there for a month or so. There are roots though, so it's not like this :faint2:


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## rohape (Feb 7, 2005)

Oh yeah, I swear I read that about the Prime.
Wow, that's odd that it hasn't grown outside. Hopefully things work out. Water Sprites pretty cheap. They give it away at my LFS.


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## HeyPK (Jan 23, 2004)

Water sprite does not like a high pH primarily because a high pH means that CO2 is low. Water sprite is definitely a high CO2 plant, and can easily be out-competed for CO2 by many other aquarium plants. In order to save your water sprite, you have to keep it in a tank where it is not competing for CO2 with other plants that are better at pulling CO2 out of the water. If you have a lot of fish in the tank that produce CO2 faster than the other plants can remove it, the water sprite should thrive. A bad situation for water sprite is when you only have a few small fish, bright light, and plants that normally grow submersed, such as Vallisneria, Eigeria, Ceratophyllum, Najas, etc.


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## rohape (Feb 7, 2005)

So this leads me to an observation. I've had "water sprite". Very flat, no carbonation, just horrible....ok, bad joke. 
This sounds like a great example of different plants being called the same names. I've had "water sprite" and it grew like crazy! I have a NPT, so no CO2 dosing.
It sounds like all the right signs as you describe HeyPK. I wonder if my experience may have been with a different plant, called the same thing.


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## HeyPK (Jan 23, 2004)

Here is a picture of water sprite, two varieties, growing with a good amount of CO2 from fish. Also, there are not other plants competing for CO2.


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## Seattle_Aquarist (Mar 7, 2008)

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.


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## Prometheus (Feb 12, 2008)

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 op2:


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## HeyPK (Jan 23, 2004)

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.


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## Prometheus (Feb 12, 2008)

yes definately.. Now it's soft and alkaline


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