Reverse Respiration

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

My plants had hair algae/diatoms and clearish leaves so I decided to do reverse respiration. 12 hours in the dark, covered with a towel.

May 17, Aponogeton before treatment

 

 

 

May 18, Aponogeton after treatment. Algae turned red? Weird.

Expected results: algae would die and plant would become green.

Actual results: Leaves melted, so I just trimmed them off…BUT!!  New growth! Even the dormant bulb popped out 2 leaves.

June 1

 

Note: diatoms on left plant in last pic are on a plant that did not go through RR

[Guppysnail]

On 6/1/2024 at 4:50 PM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

My plants had hair algae/diatoms and clearish leaves so I decided to do reverse respiration. 12 hours in the dark, covered with a towel.

May 17, Aponogeton before treatment

 

 

 

May 18, Aponogeton after treatment. Algae turned red? Weird.

Expected results: algae would die and plant would become green.

Actual results: Leaves melted, so I just trimmed them off…BUT!!  New growth! Even the dormant bulb popped out 2 leaves.

June 1

 

Note: diatoms on left plant in last pic are on a plant that did not go through RR

Red is dead. 
 

Clear leaves are already dead and beginning to melt back. The RR treatment ph prunes them quicker than them just deteriorating in the tank. 

[daggaz]

I made an adaption to this technique that I used to nurse dying plants back to health, for cases where the plant is just not doing so good but you aren't worried about other species:

1) Rinse the plant vigorously in cold, dechlorinated water (not sure if it needs to be dechlorinated but my tapwater is so..), removing any dead or dying plant tissue, biofilm, and algae in the process.   Dont forget to give the roots a good massage, too.  

2) Submerge in carbonated water, but leave a little room at the top of the container for normal air.  Use a glass container that is just large enough to contain the plant.  

3) Plastic wrap the top.

4) Place in direct sunlight unless its a light intolerant shade-plant, then just keep it on a counter inside somewhere, but where there is still light.

5) Keep it there as long as the water is clear.  Change the water for new carbonated water (rinsing lightly again) every couple days or if the water gets cloudy.

6) Keep it like this for at least several days.

7) Replant your plant in the aquarium when it starts looking green and healthy again.

 

I got some Bolbitis plants back from the brink of death using this technique (which I wouldn't ever have thought to do without reading about Reverse Respiration here on these forums!).

Edited June 21 by daggaz

[Guppysnail]

On 6/21/2024 at 10:50 AM, daggaz said:

I made an adaption to this technique that I used to nurse dying plants back to health, for cases where the plant is just not doing so good but you aren't worried about other species:

1) Rinse the plant vigorously in cold, dechlorinated water (not sure if it needs to be dechlorinated but my tapwater is so..), removing any dead or dying plant tissue, biofilm, and algae in the process.   Dont forget to give the roots a good massage, too.  

2) Submerge in carbonated water, but leave a little room at the top of the container for normal air.  Use a glass container that is just large enough to contain the plant.  

3) Plastic wrap the top.

4) Place in direct sunlight unless its a light intolerant shade-plant, then just keep it on a counter inside somewhere, but where there is still light.

5) Keep it there as long as the water is clear.  Change the water for new carbonated water (rinsing lightly again) every couple days or if the water gets cloudy.

6) Keep it like this for at least several days.

7) Replant your plant in the aquarium when it starts looking green and healthy again.

 

I got some Bolbitis plants back from the brink of death using this technique (which I wouldn't ever have thought to do without reading about Reverse Respiration here on these forums!).

I had started playing with this concept when developing RR. I added different fertilizers with great result. I never finished playing with it. 
Love that forum members are expanding uses ❤️

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

Hello all,

Wanted to report that a Malaysian trumpet snail made it through a 12 hour RR.

Great Value Seltzer Water

Plants weighed down with silverware and kept in darkness

At 12 hour mark I lifted the plants out of the seltzer and placed them in dechlorinated water. This was in the middle of the night, so I went back to bed and I planted them 6 hours later, at which point I discovered the snail shell at the bottom of the dechlorinated water container. It must have had a grip on the plant to make it to that second container?

I put the snail shell in the condiment cup of tank water then and just watched it (and recorded it). Here’s the uncut footage.

I left it there in the condiment cup all day (12 hr), kinda forgot to check on it. I figured it would either be weak and pass on, or it would live. Checked on it; it was cruising around the cup.

It has been welcomed into the shrimp tank by the MTS family that lives there.

 

Edited June 30 by Chick-In-Of-TheSea

[Guppysnail]

On 6/29/2024 at 9:14 PM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

Hello all,

Wanted to report that a Malaysian trumpet snail made it through a 12 hour RR.

Great Value Seltzer Water

Plants weighed down with silverware and kept in darkness

At 12 hour mark I lifted the plants out of the seltzer and placed them in dechlorinated water. This was in the middle of the night, so I went back to bed and I planted them 6 hours later, at which point I discovered the snail shell at the bottom of the dechlorinated water container. It must have had a grip on the plant to make it to that second container?

I put the snail shell in the condiment cup of tank water then and just watched it (and recorded it). Here’s the uncut footage.

I left it there in the condiment cup all day (12 hr), kinda forgot to check on it. I figured it would either be weak and pass on, or it would live. Checked on it; it was cruising around the cup.

It has been welcomed into the shrimp tank by the MTS family that lives there.

 

The great value used to be called seltzer. Now it’s called seltzer water. I’ve not had luck using the great value seltzer water either.  I believe it is closer to sparkling water values than the original seltzer.  

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

On 6/30/2024 at 7:02 AM, Guppysnail said:

The great value used to be called seltzer. Now it’s called seltzer water. I’ve not had luck using the great value seltzer water either.  I believe it is closer to sparkling water values than the original seltzer.  

Which one do you use now?

[Guppysnail]

On 6/30/2024 at 7:27 AM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

Which one do you use now?

Any I can find that say seltzer. Any that say seltzer water have not worked for me. Try club soda. 

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

On 6/30/2024 at 9:48 AM, Guppysnail said:

Any I can find that say seltzer. Any that say seltzer water have not worked for me. Try club soda. 

Seems in my area, stores only have one plain seltzer/seltzer water. Everything else is flavored. Might try club soda.

[dasaltemelosguy]

On 6/30/2024 at 11:16 AM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

Seems in my area, stores only have one plain seltzer/seltzer water. Everything else is flavored. Might try club soda.

On the RR website, we get a good number of letters asking if mineral water will work which of course, it will not, especially in the UK. In the UK, they use club soda for RR. Sodas tend to have a standard carbonation level, so club soda is a sure thing whereas there's a gray area between seltzer water and mineral water. For example, I looked up "Great Value" seltzer and there's not much info aside from the pH being 6 which is too high so it must be closer to mineral water than actual seltzer water. I once used Perrier and the snails just laughed at it. 🤣

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

I’m glad the snail made it. It is welcome here. 

Oh, maybe you can update OP, @dasaltemelosguy?

 

[Mortis]

Like several others, I signed up just for this thread.

Very interesting concept and I appreciate the large amounts of effort, time and money put into this.

I have a couple of questions :

1] Obviously the best time to employ reverse respiration is when setting up a new tank since it will provide you with a clean slate if your other new planted tank cycling parameters are met. Sometimes we use reuse plants from our old setups, sometimes we buy some new submerged plants from other hobbyists, sometimes we buy new plants from a shop or farm and maybe even all 3.

My question pertains to the last option. Shop and farm plants mostly tend to be emmersed-grown before we plant them and it converts to submerged growth. Has anyone tried RR with emmersed grown plants ? Or the current trend of TC plants although they are supposed to be algae free and dont really need it but maybe just to check if the health boosts do anything to help them settle quicker ?

2] Has RR been tried with any sensitive or thin leaved/stemmed plants ? I mostly see some more robust plants being used in the tests so Im curious as to the success rate with some of the more fragile or sensitive plants that are in atleast an acceptable or recoverable state of health.

[Odd Duck]

On 7/14/2024 at 11:02 AM, Mortis said:

Like several others, I signed up just for this thread.

Very interesting concept and I appreciate the large amounts of effort, time and money put into this.

I have a couple of questions :

1] Obviously the best time to employ reverse respiration is when setting up a new tank since it will provide you with a clean slate if your other new planted tank cycling parameters are met. Sometimes we use reuse plants from our old setups, sometimes we buy some new submerged plants from other hobbyists, sometimes we buy new plants from a shop or farm and maybe even all 3.

My question pertains to the last option. Shop and farm plants mostly tend to be emmersed-grown before we plant them and it converts to submerged growth. Has anyone tried RR with emmersed grown plants ? Or the current trend of TC plants although they are supposed to be algae free and dont really need it but maybe just to check if the health boosts do anything to help them settle quicker ?

2] Has RR been tried with any sensitive or thin leaved/stemmed plants ? I mostly see some more robust plants being used in the tests so Im curious as to the success rate with some of the more fragile or sensitive plants that are in atleast an acceptable or recoverable state of health.

1. a. I have used it on emerse grown plants because they can come in with animal pests even though they don’t tend to have a much, if any, algae.
b. I don’t use RR on TC plants.  The boost is temporary and even the relatively benign RR does cause very mild changes to chloroplasts.  It boosts growth for most plants but some delicate or sensitive plants it will set back a bit.

2. Yes, a variety of plants (including most species of floaters) and mosses have now been subjected to RR with varying degrees of success.  I haven’t been the one treating the most sensitive plants but I have treated various Vallisneria species with mixed results, floaters with mixed results (red root floaters are never impressed with being submerged).  I’ve not treated lots of stem plants because I pretty much suck at stem plants in general.  I have treated many species of Anubias, and many species of swords, many species of Crypts, and several species of moss - mostly the less common ones, not so much those in the Vesicularia group but Java moss has survived RR despite my best efforts at cleaning some Anubias covered rocks and Java fern covered wood pieces.  😝 

Somewhere in the thread there’s a list of plants and mosses that have undergone treatment and how they faired.  I’m not sure how up to date it is.  @dasaltemelosguy, @Guppysnail, I can’t remember who was doing the list and has it been updated lately?  I know there’s the short list at the beginning but I know others have added contributions to the list since then.

[Guppysnail]

On 7/14/2024 at 12:02 PM, Mortis said:

Has anyone tried RR with emmersed grown plants ? Or the current trend of TC plants although they are supposed to be algae free and dont really need it but maybe just to check if the health boosts do anything to help them settle quicker ?

Algae does not grow on emersed plants but could grow on the submerged roots. 
I did not test this on traditional emersed grown aquarium plants but I did test it on my pothos and lucky bamboo that had lots of algae growing on the roots in my tanks. I submerged the roots and lower stem only and they do great. 
They will not receive any health boost the way submerged grown does. The reason is emergent grown always has unlimited access to CO2.  The tank plants run out and get the boost from more of the CO2 nutrient than they can normally get. 
 

 

On 7/14/2024 at 12:02 PM, Mortis said:

Has RR been tried with any sensitive or thin leaved/stemmed plants ?

All the plants we have knowledge of are the ones we listed and what folks tested here on the thread. We did not compile those plants and results in a list because we the original testers did not physically test in controlled circumstances so that every plant was tested identically. Folks have mixed results based on time, temperature and tank parameters the plants are in.  

 

On 7/15/2024 at 4:45 AM, Odd Duck said:

Somewhere in the thread there’s a list of plants and mosses that have undergone treatment and how they faired.  I’m not sure how up to date it is.  @dasaltemelosguy, @Guppysnail, I can’t remember who was doing the list and has it been updated lately?  I know there’s the short list at the beginning but I know others have added contributions to the list since then.

The closest list is from @modified lung tests in this thread but his results varied on some plants from my results. 

[Guppysnail]

@Mortis, @Odd Duck results also vary depending on the health of the plant. The plants tested by other were to rid the algae. Once a plant is algae covered those leaves are dying. RR ph prunes those leaves as talked about in the article. Folks become disappointed because they did not read the entire article and just leave feedback off …it killed my plants or caused them to not look great. It’s the month after treatment growth that shows the boost. 
To test behavior of boost you need to start  with healthy unaffected plants. 

[Mortis]

Thanks for the info.

Im going to give it a shot in a few months. I have to paint the room where my display tank is so Ill have to tear it down. The tank is 10 years old so needs replacing anyways. Ill be transferring a few stems each of the plants I want to keep into a spare nano tank I have so Ill try RR before doing that.

Also farm plants are grown in different ways. Some are grown in shallow pools so sometimes the bottom sections can have some algae or if the plant flops over and some of it is resting on the surface. Its rare but can happen. Usually with farm plants algae comes into the pic due to deteriorating health while its in shipping causing some mushy leaves and then when its stored in a holding tank before going out to customers.

In general I can easily deal with most algae outbreaks when they occur however my biggest weakness is BBA. No matter what I do I always get BBA. Im familiar with the usual algae prevention and control methods but I have to admit that I fail miserably at keeping organics in check because Im extremely lazy when it comes to maintenance.

I dont clean the external filters often enough which is why I use 2 of them when 1 would suffice to ensure that flow doesnt reduce drastically. But still they do gather a lost of waste in there.

I have tried many methods of cleaning the substrate including those battery powered vacuum cleaners but I cant get the flow balance right. Either I clog the siphon with substrate or barely move it or I uproot my carpet.

So for the new tank Im going to make it a bit more sterile by doing RR for all the plants that go in. Bleach all rocks and DW and only use RO for water changes.

Edited July 15 by Mortis