Scarlet Temple

[Axredx]

Hello everybody, I hope you are doing well. I just noticed my greeting sort of sounded like Cory, at least in my mind when I read it back. He's gonna slap me in the back of the head, lol. So my question is, what is it about this plant, I am keeping a large variety of plants easy to medium level as I do not use C02. I have struggled with some only to make them hard core back in my aquariums. This little beautiful plant Scarlet Temple, is not liking something I'm doing, I have tried more light, less light, fertilizer tabs, easy green, and my water parameters are very good on all my established tanks. I have purchased 12 of these fellas and they all melted on me. I bought some from co-op, from amazon, from petco, petsmart, whatever. They melt on me within a week. Any tips are so much appreciated, I love this plant, but the only thing I can figure is that I need CO2. If that's the case I will have to search something new as I don't desire to use CO2, not because it may seem tricky or more money to spend but because, I want to be able to have almost all natural set ups in my tanks. So, what say you, thanks in advance.

[JoeQ]

Imo, its just fickle and melts for no reason. The first time I tried I bought from aquarium coop and it melted on me (I blame the heat and massive difference in our waters) The second time I ordered it from a closer source that had it already converted and its been growing ever since without co2. Outa curiosity, what are you water parameters (including temp). 

[Kurt Brutting]

I personally never kept scarlet temple, but it makes me think of my situation with Crypts. I have tried multiple kinds of crypts from several different places and they just don’t do good in my water. Leaves grow and melt grow and melt. Some plants unfortunately don’t do good in certain water even with perfect water parameters. 

[nabokovfan87]

On 7/13/2022 at 2:35 PM, JoeQ said:

Imo, its just fickle and melts for no reason.

I have had good and bad times with scarlet temple.

1.  It is very, very easy to get excess algae on the leaves, so lean dosing and lower light might be a method to keep it going.
2.  It doesn't not like CO2.  Again, this goes back to algae sort of, but I think this plant has two modes.  It either likes to grow quickly or it's the low and slow method.
3.  I would hold off on dosing iron for the sake of dosing iron. This goes back to algae issues as well.

I have not had a lot of success with the plant, but it's one I definitely want to get it to thrive.  Eventually I will.  I had PSO, Bacopa, Val, all of those do well but the ST didn't.
(water at the time was high hardness, Stable KH, 6.8-7.0 PH) <--- With and without CO2.

Edited July 13, 2022 by nabokovfan87