Crypt Parvati help

[bryanisag]

Hi all, I have struggled with this plant for a long time and I'm now admitting that it's not getting better. My first problem was uprooting issues so I moved my horse face loach and as many MTS as I could and now my plants stay rooted which is a huge help. But they don't look good at all. Any help is appreciated. I want this plant specifically to spread and fill in and I'm aware that it takes a really long time. Also I recently bought another crypt parva from the coop. I put a root tab in the rock wool and dropped the pot in a coop planter and it melted away and never came back so my water might just not work with this species. Here's all the parameters I can think of to list.

Tank size: 37 gallon. Think 29 but even taller.

Light: fluval aquasky 600mm on from 11AM to 9 PM

Substrate: 2 inches of gravel with coop root tabs and no gravel vacuum in years so very mulmy.

Filter: 29 gallon sump.

Lid: 1/8 inch thick glass lid.

Temp: 78

STT: tank has run for over 5 years but was moved to a new house June 5th

Plants in question: bought from the coop and planted on June 5th. 2 pots of crypt parva unseparated and derock wooled.

Other plants that are mostly doing well: crypt lucens, Christmas moss, crypt tropical, crynum, and in the sump are guppy grass, dwarf water letuce, duck weed, and pothos. 

Stocking: 80 plus guppies, 8 corrys, 1 hillstream loach, lots of MTS and bladder snails.

Coop test strips readings:

Nitrate: around 50 (always doing water changes to keep it from getting way too high as a result of my intentionally high stocking)

Nitrite: 0

Hardness: pink off the charts.

Buffer: dark green off the charts.

PH: high 7s to low 8s

Chorine: 0

Ammonia: 0

The dirty photo is from set up day (June 4th 2022) and the other 2 are of parva and lucens today

Also I use easy green when I can after water changes get my nitrates low enough

Edited September 5, 2022 by bryanisag
Typo

[Patrick_G]

It’s a great plant but grows at a glacial pace! Mine barely grows at all but stays algae free and looks good.
I think you might get a similar look with the easier to grow Dwarf chain sword. 

[Jenja]

Your parva looks like it needs to be split into plantlets, the second photo in particular. In my experience with it the clump will look dense like that once it's time to break it apart, it doesn't really spread like you'd see with say, dwarf chain sword.

[bryanisag]

On 9/5/2022 at 3:39 PM, Patrick_G said:

It’s a great plant but grows at a glacial pace! Mine barely grows at all but stays algae free and looks good.
I think you might get a similar look with the easier to grow Dwarf chain sword. 

Wow your parva looks amazing!! Great pic! I have larger gravel in my tank and I know from trying that any smaller plants won't stay down for more than a day. Do you have higher or lower light on your parva? 

[OutBout]

Certain crypts prefer either hard or soft water. It's possible that this one just didn't like the water chemistry. Also, how often are you root feeding? Crypts can be notoriously slow at acclimatization, especially if going from an emersed specime.