Water snowball -gymnocoronis spilanthoides

I recently gutted my 29g dirt/soil w/sand cap planted tank and went for a bare bottom with a few glass pyrex containers with soil/sand cap for a few "rooted" plants.

In one of the containers I planted some Water Snowball or Gymnocoronis Splianthoides. I've never heard of the plant before. I came across it on EBay and it seemed nice looking and inexpensive. Everything I could find online said it was a march plant that does well submerged so I figured I'd give it a try.

I'm hoping it will help with water quality and be a nice bushy plant for my notos to disappear into when it's not feeding time and they want to chill. I didn't see any posts about this plant so I figured I'd start a thread to share how it goes and see if anyone else have used this plant and wants to share their experience.

I've had a lot of issues with plants lately and noticed my tap water went from a pH in the low 8s to being in the high 6s after the town did some work on the water system in my area so I figured I'd try some different plants than those that seemed to be strongholds for me in the past.

Attached is a picture of it in my tank. ...just can't get it to upload without being sideways.

So far a small amount of leaves have fallen off, but not really that many. I think there's been some root growth. Some of my newts started laying infertile eggs on some of the leaves, so it seems ok for egg laying.

I had 2 newts that I've had for years die a few weeks ago, which was about 3 weeks after I added this plant to the aquarium. That was the only change I made to the setup and water parameters and temp didn't change.

I can't say it was the plant but I felt it was too much of a coincidence and the way the plant was growing made me this it wanted to be emerse. So I pulled the plug because of that and because I was f'ing pissed 2 newts died. Haven't had any issues since. All the other newts seem healthy, hungry and active.

I can't say it was this type of plant or my specific source that as the issue, but it wasn't worth crossing my fingers and hoping it wasn't a problem. If everything remains ok in the tank I'll be very hesitant to try an oddball plant in the future. Just not worth it. Healthy newts with hornwort or some other "basic" plant is good enough. Health newts w/ healthy plants is all one can ask you. The newts don't care how 'cool' the plants are.