Heterostructures consisting of metal coated rod hyperbolic metamaterials (HMMs) and colloidal photonic crystals (PhCs) are proposed and fabricated. There are two different mechanisms for the reflection valleys induced from the excitation of plasmons in HMMs. Besides the common wave vector matching effects from colloidal gratings, band edge effects provide additional excitations in heterostructures. Slow light induced excitation is verified by separately modifying the photonic bandgap and grating parameters on HMMs using multilayer or monolayer colloidal crystals, 1D PhCs, or ellipsoid arrays, and by modifying the interval or metal thickness in heterostructures. Index-dependent sensitivity of the valleys is enhanced by the bandgap effect.