What to do with Shedding Hornwort?

[FrozenFins]

I have some hornwort that does not stop shedding! All the hornwort in my other tanks are green and growing wonderfully! But the hornwort in one of my bettas tanks is not doing so great. Its shedding all the leaves. I know its not a lack of nutrients (I have nearly 40ppm of nitrates and about 1ppm of nitrites, and 0.25 ppm of amonia). I have read that hornwort will sometimes do this when first introduced to a new enviourment. But from what I have read online people will just imediatly trash the hornwort the second it starts shedding. If I leave it in there will it grow back? Should I get new hornwort from my other tanks to take care of that excess nutrintes and let the dying hornwort recover? All though I'm excited for the mulm the shedded leaves will make. 

 

[Isaac M]

I would let it recover as it is just adjusting to your aquarium. It should grow back. I imagine if you add hornwort from a different tank it would do the same as it adjusts. Not sure how much hornwort is shedding but I would remove some of the fallen leaves/ needles just to keep the nitrates from building up to excessively high levels. You can definitely leave some though to get the mulm going.  

[Torrey]

Hornwort needs a lot of calcium, too. Sounds like your water supply has plenty, as the other tanks are doing well. 

I use hornwort as a visual checklist for water quality:

 

Is there getting to be a long internodal length?

-add more light

Are leaves/needles turning yellow?

-nutrients

Are leaves browning on the plant?

-water change shock or decreasing calcium levels in the water 

 

My healthies hornwort growth is on stems that dropped 90% of their needles in new tanks.

In my 4' guppy tank, the hornwort went completely brown and I was starting to consider scrapping it. I had already gone through my full checklist and I simply couldn't get hornwort to grow in that tank.

 

Hornwort can be allelopathic, so I had given it an entire cubic foot of space to have to itself.... and it simply would not grow!

 

Then, when I made the decision that if there wasn't any new growth when I did my next water change, I was going to accept defeat.....

 

It decided to stay in the tank.

This last picture is from last week. Tomorrow I can get a better image of all the new growth. I still don't have a clue what exactly changed, but 3 months after melt back had started, and a month after I was ready to give up.... the hornwort is growing like crazy.

[Tanked]

If you have Hornwort growing in other tanks, I would remove some or all of the Hornwort from the Betta tank.  Have you added other plants to the tank?  I never had any shedding problem until I added Elodea to the tank. As the Elodea began to settle in  The Hornwort apocalypse of 2020 began.  I was unable to save any of it.