Java Fern Help

[MG Insane]

Hey everyone,

Hopefully someone can share some knowledge with me. I have had my tank for 6 months and seem to be a pro at killing java fern. People preach that it is an easy plant but I have no such luck. Even before I introduced the grow light 3 months in I was definitely seeing signs of it dieing back aswell. All the other plants seem to be doing well. Many different types of anubias all growing slowly and others aswell. But for whatever reason my java ferns keep dieing. My narrow leaf variety is very slow growing once I started fertilizer. My needle leaf and windelov variety no luck just dieing back and constantly splitting into baby ferns that die aswell. 

 

Water Parameters 

7.8ph

80 Fahrenheit 

Hyger grow light set to 24/7 setting

Dose 2/3 per week flourish & flourish potassium 

Most feed flakes and brine shrimp 

NO CO2

No substrate 

Guppy & snail tank. 

 

[TheSwissAquarist]

Are any of the other plants wilting? Try Easy Green as a first course of action.

How big is the tank? Maybe also try dimming the light a bit, or turning it on less?

Does anyone else have any other ideas?

@Fish Folk @Guppysnail @Chick-In-Of-TheSea

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

Usually w/ java fern problems such as brown spots, leaves turning brown and falling off, I suggest potassium, but I see that @MG Insane is already dosing potassium.  

[TheSwissAquarist]

On 11/4/2022 at 4:23 PM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

Usually w/ java fern problems such as brown spots, leaves turning brown and falling off, I suggest potassium, but I see that @MG Insane is already dosing potassium.  

In that case, I'm clueless!

Maybe the fact that there's 

On 11/4/2022 at 9:21 AM, MG Insane said:

No substrate

?

[Guppysnail]

Most Java fern is grown emerged above water. The leaves are not suitable to grow underwater. They produce baby plants that are adapted to growing underwater. Those I let grow attached to the parent leaf until the parent leaf becomes yellow white or brown then pluck the baby off and use that. 
I have circled the baby. They are produced when the plant is stressed example unable to breath underwater so grow adaptive babies. 

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

On 11/4/2022 at 11:24 AM, TheSwissAquarist said:

Maybe the fact that there's 

On 11/4/2022 at 4:21 AM, MG Insane said:

No substrate

?

No substrate is ideal for JF.  It just feeds from the water column. The rhizome can be attached to wood or rocks so that water flows around it.  

@Guppysnail that happened to me before I started using the potassium. The leaves would turn completely black, and yet there were tons of babies on them.  I saved the babies and glued them to stuff.

[MG Insane]

Thank you everyone I'm going to give that a shot 

[Fish Folk]

Not a good answer, but here’s a “mother” Java Fern…

It grows in a highly stocked rank. Never bury the rhizome…

 

[TheSwissAquarist]

On 11/4/2022 at 6:03 PM, Fish Folk said:

Not a good answer, but here’s a “mother” Java Fern…

It grows in a highly stocked rank. Never bury the rhizome…

 

Any luck with catching plecos out of the second tank yet??

[Fish Folk]

On 11/4/2022 at 1:06 PM, TheSwissAquarist said:

Any luck with catching plecos out of the second tank yet??

Yes! I sold off 15x on Tuesday to my LFS.

[TheSwissAquarist]

On 11/4/2022 at 6:21 PM, Fish Folk said:

Yes! I sold off 15x on Tuesday to my LFS.

Good work! 👏 👏👏

[Odd Duck]

Just FYI, here’s a chart that compares nutrient content by percentage in the solution for several different brands.  Compare your Flourish to Easy Green to see the difference and why we are all so eager to recommend Easy Green.  This is not to say you couldn’t get there with Flourish but you’d have to use WAY more of it to achieve the same thing and your cost will actually be higher than Easy Green in the long run.  Plus look carefully at proportions.

 

Edited November 4, 2022 by Odd Duck
Expand and clarify.

[ccurtis]

From the pictures you are posting it looks like mine did when I had potassium deficiencies. I see you are already dosing potassium though. When I started dosing additional potassium, I chose to go with API Leaf Zone. I was already dosing easy green. API Leaf Zone is soluble potash (potassium) and iron. Once I started doing the leaf zone, I noticed an improvement in my java fern after about a month. If the seachem potassium is just potassium, I wonder if it needs the iron as well. Just a thought. Good luck.   

[Comradovich]

My experience with growing Java Fern is pretty much exactly what @Guppysnail suggested above. I had a fern with almost your exact look, brownish holey leaves, but lots of little babies on the end. So I did what @Guppysnailsuggested, I cut the babies off and super glued them to driftwood. Babies are now huge, original plant is looking... okay. I still have to trim off dead or dying leaves from it every now and again, but the babies are getting nice and full no matter where I place them in the tank. As I've been trimming off the dead leaves, I have noticed that my original plant is spreading out its rhyzome more, and also that the remaining leaves perked up quite a bit. It's by no means a perfect looking original plant, but it is better looking than when it was sprouting babies. Thing about the babies was that sometimes I could glue them to the exact same driftwood as the parent plant, and they'd do better than it did.

Trim off some dying leaves, place babies on driftwood, see if that doesn't improve the colony. I don't own any houseplants that I don't prune at least once a year, and a lot of these are from the same cuttings I got 27 years ago from my high-school horticulture elective.

[tolstoy21]

I have buckets and bins full of Java Fern. So much I don't even know what to do with it all (hence the buckets and bins). I barely feed it and it gets pretty mediocre light and still grows more prolific than I know what to do with it. I don't have any substrate and often just let it free float in tanks.

So, I am going to second what others have said about it perhaps transitioning from emerged to submerged form.  I don't know that this is in fact what's going on with yours, but I keep java fern because it's the one plant that I find fool proof even when neglected (aside from some anubias and a few potted crypts, it's the only plant I keep). 

As for the 'plantlets' forming on leaves. I keep hearing that they form when the plant is stressed, but I find very healthy-looking plants with tons of little (and big) plants on them. 

You don't have to clip the plantlets off if you don't want to. I often leave them attached to leaves floating around in the water and they grow fine. If left attached to the 'mother plant' they will grow large and eventually break off on their own. I am guessing this is how the plant propagates -- by sending its progeny downstream where they catch onto wood or settle in a snag in the rocks and start the next generation anew.

Below is a fraction of what I have accumulated. I'm starting to run of of room for it! (I hate to admit that I composted a whole 5 gallon bucket of it last year). All of these started as wee little plantlets, so save every plantlet if you can and eventually you'll have a java fern forest.

Keep in mind that Java Fern is pretty slow growing (my accumulation of it has happened over a few years). But it does creep up on you if you let it.

One day you have a few little plants; a year or so later you look into your tank and think: 'Wow look at all that. When did that happen. I'm going to have to thin it out!"

 

I also store some of it in the waste-water bin of my auto-water change setup.

Edited November 7, 2022 by tolstoy21