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Does Every Plant Melt?


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I just added some moneywort, water sprite and several crypts two weeks ago. I expected the crypts to melt but I didn't realize the moneywort would. Is that normal? The water sprite died, so that coupled with the other plants melting and a dwarf lily bulb that is a month in and refuses to sprout, my tank looks like a wasteland. I was dosing the tank with Flourish until I accidentally killed the bladder snail in the tank. I'm going to start with Easy Green as soon as it gets here. 

Is there anything that doesn't melt that I can add? 

Also, my nitrate level is hanging out at 5 ppm. I'm assuming the Easy Green will fix that?  

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Java fern and anubias are pretty much bulletproof in my experience. I've had java moss melt away in all but one tank initially though, but the moss that grew in the one tank grew so well I was able to transfer some to the other tanks where it had melted previously and now it's growing well everywhere. By and large I find aquarium plants to be a bit fickle. If I buy stem plants I separate them and plant one in each of my four planted tanks to see where it does best. All four tanks should be the same, but plants don't agree. Some will grow like weeds in one and not at all in another.

I've got some dwarf sag that came last week. When taken from the pot there were two plants a smaller one and a larger one.  The large one got planted in one of my bigger tanks under supposedly better lighting and is surviving, but not thriving. The smaller one went into my 10 gal QT tank and got uprooted by the pleco in there, but is thriving in mid-water, entangled in some java moss, so I haven't replanted it yet. It's getting lots of new growth, new roots and looks great, so I'm letting it hang out there for a bit. It's doing better than the one that's planted in supposedly better conditions. 

We had a local Mom and Pop fish store called Evan's Tropical Fish that was literally run out of their back porch and they sold me my first water sprite, many, many years ago. It died. They kept giving me more every time I shopped there and it always died. Then one day, one small nearly dead branch had a bright green little plantlet emerge and from then on I had all of the water sprite I could ever use. I've got tons of java fern in every tank and I don't even remember where I first got it. There are literally hundreds of them now. Anubias Nana Petite was bought a long time ago and it's all over the place now. I just moved a foot-long section of it to a plastic Sterilite container filled with water that I have under some plant lights as I don't need it in any of the tanks and it was just floating around. I hate to throw it away, so it's sitting there until I get a new tank started and need some plants. (It's got lots of plant life company in the Sterilite container also. I'll have to start weeding stuff out before too long.)

I think there are plants that will grow just about anywhere, but you won't know which they are until you try and find out. A plant that's supposedly easy to grow for most may never grow for you, but a "difficult" plant may thrive for you. You just never know.

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8 minutes ago, gardenman said:

Plant that's supposedly easy to grow for most may never grow for you, but a "difficult" plant may thrive for you. You just never know.

I'm learning that! I guess right now I just have "newbie syndrome" because I do so much research and try so hard to make my little tank a nice home for all and I'm having issues with things I thought were going to be easy for me. I mean, how could I kill a bladder snail for goodness sake?! But here is where that patience thing comes in again. I'm just trying not to beat myself up about it all. 

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5 minutes ago, James Black said:

I had anubius nana petite, and I'm pretty sure it was the only plant in that tank that didn't die, lol. I would recceomnd that, you don't even need to plant it, you can tie it on a peice of wood or something like that 🙂

I have my eye on that exact plant. I've avoided anything I have to secure to hardscapes because I thought that might be a disaster for me but I think it's time to just try it out. 

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3 minutes ago, Jennifer V said:

I have my eye on that exact plant. I've avoided anything I have to secure to hardscapes because I thought that might be a disaster for me but I think it's time to just try it out. 

When I got my anubius I put in the sand not knowing it could go on hard scape and such. It worked fine for me until my Angels decided they didn't want it anymore and they dug it up. Its in my betta tank now and doing well and is in the substrate.

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