will plants make a comeback?

[mtnmonster]

After the really bad ammonia spike one of my tanks had I've lost all but one fish. My plants are also dying back. I've been doing 50-60% water changes and now getting 0 ammonia an 1 ppm nitirtes and 30ppm nitrates.  water sprite is turning black and the sag and crypt are just melting. I did trim off the healthy branches of the water sprite to attempt to save and those are floating in a well established tank and seem to just slightly be discoloring. Will the dwarf sag, water sprite, and crypt rebound or should I just plan on replanting once the tank stabilizes?

[DaveO]

If memory serves me, you just recently planted an already established tank, right? If so, leave the plants in there and just remove the dead and dying leaves. Most plants recover from this melt. Also this melt explains your ammonia spike.

Edited November 27, 2021 by DaveO

[mtnmonster]

On 11/27/2021 at 4:08 PM, DaveO said:

If memory serves me, you just recently planted an already established tank, right? If so, leave the plants in there and just removed the dead and dying leaves. Most plants recover from this melt. Also this melt explains your ammonia spike.

This is a different tank. That tank is doing great and crypts only had a couple leaves melt. This one is another I had doing a fishless cycle and I put in the betta and a snail. Everything was fine and no spikes. Then I added some baby 2 khuli loaches a week later and then another week everything was still showing cycled I added 3 guppies and it crashed overnight. Plants weren't melting and were actually showing growth until that point. I'm not sure what triggered it. Tank was cycled fishless for about 6 weeks and 0 ammonia 0nitirte and 20nitriate before I added betta and snail. Then it didn't change. When I added the kulhis it still didn't change.  I figured it was good after no spikes within 2 weeks of fish in. The plants were in there about a week before any fish. I've been removing dead plant matter to keep the ammonia down and there's just not much left. I'm just wondering if I should just leave them or pull them and start over. 

[lefty o]

crypts are really resilient. ive had them come back after doing bad thigs to them.  the other plants, idk, but there's one way to find out. give it a little wait and see if anything new pops up.

[DaveO]

I can't seem to kill crypts either. I've had some melt and recover better than ever. I have killed dwarf sag, I thought, then after a long while it returned with a vengeance. Both of these require thinning out and some removal so as not to over crowd the tanks. I would leave them in your tank and see if they regrow. Probably will.

Edited November 27, 2021 by DaveO
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[B7gwap]

Out of curiosity, what is your KH and PH? I waited a long time for a fishless cycle on a low PH tank, only to discover that our friendly bacteria don’t care for acidic water and super low KH, it can cause a runaway PH crash with the addition of nitrogen compounds and/or CO2, and even if it doesn’t crash, it can take a long time for the colony to build up. I ended up just dosing it with a minimal amount of baking soda and it kicked right over. 

[Flumpweesel]

I'd give the plants a chance to come back, it's free to wait and see. I've had things recover from complete die back but you could be waiting a very long time. I wouldn't have expected three crash to do that much damage to them though so do keep an eye on pH.