Plant advice needed

[beastie]

Hi all. While I am sort of confident in my fishkeeping abilities, my plant keeping (aquatic only!) abilities are abysmal. While I do ok with the anubias and in some tanks, java moss and java fern, I have no head for planning a plant scape nor do I pick good type of plants to work in my mostly low light and basically zero fert environments

Please help a girl out, given I just managed to kill another plant ( that I was given by another aquarist in a swap, limnophila aromatica ), the undestroyable plant (stargrass) I ought to be able to keep is not looking best and I have open spaces that could use some fill in.

Front view

Side view

Partial back view

 

Plants:

stargrass

sword, acquired two months ago

sword that has been there for years now

ancient anubias, but the algae

hygrophilla, no idea if it is doing well

and the newly killed aromatica

[beastie]

BTW this was exactly a month ago, week or two after I planted it

[beastie]

I actually did get a better light, I went from 2x39W bulbs that I didnt replace in 4 years to a LED white 35W this year in february or so. It got better, way less hair algae I would say.

I bought fertilizer, used like once a month, but I am unwilling to buy again, because this tank  is overstocked, I feed a lot and therefore there is enough plant food. And I need more nutrients sucked out rather than added in.

 

I did some test some time back, I am not the testing sort of person, that is why I usually aim low requirement plants/fish/... my GH was 1, my KH was 6, pH around 7, slightly lower in the tank, different in all of the tanks but only by 0,2 in each direction, nitrate according to my water supplier is 25 mg/l but they are also saying my pH is 7,8 so...

[Lonkley]

Well, I've found that with plants, the best thing to do is be patient and leave them alone. As long as they have roots just give them a chance, and it might take many months depending on their growth rate and competition with the faster growing plants thriving.

That said it seems like they need nutrients.  Root Tabs and EZ Green would likely perk it up. Honestly the tank doesn't look overstocked, but it's impossible to tell if you're not testing water on a regular basis. It doesn't even really matter what your utility says. The water changes with your fish and tank materials. As a bonus, you'll likely start losing your algae if you feed the plants.

 

Edited November 24, 2023 by Lonkley

[TMartins]

I was struggling with my plants also for a while and even couldn't grow Val.  I increased the lighting on my Fluval 3.0 and started adding more Easy Green and Seachem Equilibrium and now all my plants are taking off.  

[nabokovfan87]

On 11/24/2023 at 12:43 AM, beastie said:

ancient anubias, but the algae

Oh man,

I'm gonna have to pull out the old photos to explain what happened to mine!

Here is the anubias today.  Anubias nangi in the middle there.

Let's go back in time, we have the oldest photo before all the plants moved which was with the white sand:



After the move:


Once this tank was setup there was just a balance issue and too much light, the BBA took off like crazy.  All of the anubias looked very beat up and no matter what plants I had used nothing would grow or take hold.



5-6 months later, looking at the dates on the photo:



There's still a ton of algae, the plant is barely hanging on and it's not a good situation.  The leaves would fall off every few weeks and a new one would grow, quickly looking like the photo you see above.  This went on for a very long time and it took me a while to really dive into what was going on.

A few things that I would recommend every planted tank aquarist work on is:
1.  Plant placement
2.  Planting technique
3.  Fertilization (and testing of that fertilization)
4.  Understanding lighting

Plant Placement referring to simply having and idea of where plants need to go in order to be successful.  This ties into understanding how the lighting in the tank is setup as well as what the plants need, or in my case... needed to avoid.  You can see that anubias on a suction cup and the reason for that was because I was trying to give the plant off-center light and keep it in the shaded sections of the tank.  Instead of being on the wood, which was also growing BBA, it was moved to a place where the wood could be contained to remove the bba as well as the plant.  In the original setup, everything was low demand and I could simply turn the entire tank light down.

Planting technique is something that takes a lot of practice.  I highly recommend watching videos with or by Filipe Oliveira because he is really good at explaining this.  Something as simple as planting each stem by itself when planting a bunch of stems so that there is enough room for the roots to have their own little area.  Learning how or when to trim plants is also a key skill.  Trimming encourages the plants to grow the way that you want them to and to help shape the look of a tank over time.  There's a lot to dive into here, but the point is that it's really critical to be able to have a feel for getting rid of issues before they get worse or helping a plant succeed and increasing the plant mass through trimming.

Fertilization is something where a lot of people want to have this ecosystem of no water changes, no filter, no cleaning, and no effort, but that simply isn't the case.  Some plants like to have root tabs.  Some plants need that water column fertilization.  Some plants don't need much, like anubias, but they will do a lot better when it comes to their overall health and growth if you give them a little love.  Understanding your water, the GH and KH, is also pretty critical and it was one of the things where I struggles with the most.  I can dump all the ferts need be in the water, but if I don't have the water minerals balanced, then the plants don't have what they need.  From green aqua, the easy way to view it is that you want your GH to be about double the value of your KH.  Importantly, you want GH > KH.  Use an all in one fert once a week.  You should see the plants do better for you in the end.  This also helps them recover from things like trimmings or propagate out more efficiently.

Understanding lighting is really all about understanding what the plant you have wants and where to put it in the tank.  There is also an entire different mindset of having the right light for the job.  Roll that all up into a big pile and the moral of the story is that it's not as simple as having a tank, plants, and a light that says it can grow plants.  There is some skill in how you place the light on the tank, where it sits on the glass, how you scape the tank, and where you put everything inside the tank.

The other key point not mentioned is simply fighting algae.  That is it's own topic!

There is a lot to dive into in your photos and your questions, but hopefully those few basics above really get you researching into the right areas.

Edited November 29, 2023 by nabokovfan87

[nabokovfan87]

On 11/24/2023 at 12:43 AM, beastie said:

The plant on the right, the crypt, it's shading out the middle of the tank.  There isn't a lot of plants there, but this might be a really awesome place for some anubias on that wood!

 

 

On 11/24/2023 at 12:43 AM, beastie said:

The anubias, you need to remove the black leaves and you can do this because you have a lot of healthy leaves on the left section there.  The rhizome itself is growing upward towards the surface, trying to get light.  This just means the anubias is growing upward as oppose to along the tank.  You take a cutting off that rhizome, remove the dead/dying growth, tie that or attach it to the wood in the middle, and you have a really nice way to allow that anubias to grow across the tank and get a lot of low light.  You can thin out the crypt to allow some more light to the substrate for the sword and anubias, but not too much because of course you don't want to blast those big broad leaf plants with light.

 

 

On 11/24/2023 at 12:43 AM, beastie said:

hygrophilla, no idea if it is doing well

and the newly killed aromatica

Especially in the second photo, you can see the majority of the leaves are missing or showing nutrient deficiency issues. Something like crypts, swords, epiphytes can handle no having as much fertilization or having just root tabs, but the real impact you can see in the stems. 

 

On 11/24/2023 at 12:43 AM, beastie said:

The holes in the leaves and the leaves wilting away into nothing is the plant basically trying to sacrifice part of itself to stay alive. 

[beastie]

Thank you very much for the detailed answer.

I decided to move the sword under the crypt to the shade where it can hopefully handle it, I bought some root tab fertilizers that I put under each sword, I moved the light to be more in the open area to shine more on the stargrass and hygrophilla. I threw away the aromatica and some strands.

I will try to get some simple plants like rotala and put them in the empty spaces. What is left now is to wait ( for the stargrass, didnt touch it yet, will wait if the movement of light helps it), if the new leaves of the sword stop having holes ( I still assume the old leaves may be shed due to replanting) and split the anubias. 

 

I guess I will have to get new gh/kh tests and water column fertilizers afterwards 

[nabokovfan87]

On 11/28/2023 at 11:14 PM, beastie said:

I guess I will have to get new gh/kh tests and water column fertilizers afterwards 

Sounds good.  Based on what you said above, try to get your hands on something like seachem equilibrium too if you need to raise up the GH.  Just raise it slowly as I've come to find the directions on the back are a bit off.  I added a small amount, got a big spike, so just add less than you think you need and run some tests, that's all.