Evan Baker

Cool, thanks

I recently purchased my first dwarf water lily that had a couple of small leaves. They day after I planted it, I found the leaves had come off. I don't think they melted since it was so quickly and assume my bristlenose pleco probably was rough around it and knocked them off. Do I just need to be patient and they will most likely grow new leaves of is it probably done for?

I'm aware of the overall benefits of crushed coral to raise PH and so forth. But I have heard Cory state they use it in the warehouse with the live plants. I don't understand the specific benefits of raised PH and such with live plants. Can someone educate me on this please?

I know crushed coral raised PH, GH etc.... I've heard Cory state aquarium coop has it in the holding tanks for plants at the warehouse. Wondering what the benefit for plants is. Could this be something that helps me with stem plants? I cannot keep stem plants alive, at least bacopa, rotala, and ludwigia always die off on me, but things like pogostemon steallatus octopus, Mexican oak leaf, sag grass and valisneria all do pretty well for me.

Ahhhhh..... I mis-spoke.... Anoxic is what I'm trying to avoid. Thanks for all the input. I had a tank that went anoxic I believe. Large pockets of hydrogen sufate or whatever the gas is built up in the gravel. When I did maintenance on it last weekend removing some plants and stirring up the gravel from it large gas bubbles were released making my entire basement wreak, and my wife very unhappy with me and my hobby. It was a heavily planted tank and all I had done with it was vac the surface and only occasionally dig in to the gravel in the areas with less plants due to not wanting to disturb the roots of plants.

How do you keep the substrate in a planted tank from becoming anaerobic? Or what causes the substrate to become anaerobic?

I have a heavily planted tank that I have mainly only gravel vacced the surface of the gravel to get detritus and not dug in to the gravel to get anything that has accumulated in the gravel. It has gradually began to smell a little funky. Today I did some work on it, to include more thorough gravel vac and it released some large bubble, I can't remember the gas that builds up in the gravel and has a sulfery smell to it, but obviously it was there and got released. Any recommendations on ways to prevent this with a heavily planted tank so I don't get a bad smelling tank again? Not sure what to do about the gravel vac because I don't want to damage the plants. I used to have Malaysian trumpet snails in years past and never seems to have this problem, but I don't currently have maybe I need to find some and get those going again since they bury themselves in the gravel and might help with that issue.