So, in my 125 Gallon I have an inch or two of dirt, an inch of aquatic potting rocks (high iron content), covered by an inch or two of sand. It's stocked heavily enough to support this kind of plant life, and I also have 2 tubes of T5, one pink plant growth, the other 65000K over the whole tank. I have Vallisneria just blowing up my 40 Gallon Breeder, but as soon as I put any in this tank, after one day the leaves melt from being 2 feet long to a few inches, and in about 3 days the entire plant is gone. I don't know what's killing them. Please help!
Vallisneria Will Not Grow!
Started by
Guest_Yeahson421_*
, Jun 15 2013 12:44 PM
18 replies to this topic
#2
Guest_EricaWieser_*
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Posted 15 June 2013 - 01:10 PM
Maybe your pH or DH is wrong for the plant. You could give up on it and find a similar looking species. It's not the only grass-like plant. I mean, when you try, you try, but not every biotope tank can 100% match the species found in the wild. Sometimes a plant that looks similar is the best you can do.
Erica's list of grass like plants
* Vallisneria americana, gigantea
* Crinum species
* Hygrophila corymbosa narrow leaf
* Acorus variegatus
* Lilaeopsis brasiliensis, mauritiana
* Echinodorus tenellus
* Eleocharis acicularis, parvula
If it's temperature that's the issue, try some of your local potamogeton species. They like cold water.
P.S. Plants like to eat blue and red light. The K value of a bulb does not tell you what colors are in its spectrum available for plants to eat. Here is the absorption spectrum of chlorophyll:
If it were me I'd add a blue LED. The 900 lumen ones are $8 on ebay. And I usually go for about 100 to 200 lumens per gallon on a timer for as many hours of light a day don't encourage algae growth.
http://forum.nanfa.o...ing-for-125gal/
P.S.S. Plants need at least 10 ppm dissolved nitrogen to grow well. For our uses nitrate works best (ammonia and nitrite being toxic to fish at 10 ppm). If you test your water and it's 0 ppm ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate, the plants might be starving.
Erica's list of grass like plants
* Vallisneria americana, gigantea
* Crinum species
* Hygrophila corymbosa narrow leaf
* Acorus variegatus
* Lilaeopsis brasiliensis, mauritiana
* Echinodorus tenellus
* Eleocharis acicularis, parvula
If it's temperature that's the issue, try some of your local potamogeton species. They like cold water.
P.S. Plants like to eat blue and red light. The K value of a bulb does not tell you what colors are in its spectrum available for plants to eat. Here is the absorption spectrum of chlorophyll:
If it were me I'd add a blue LED. The 900 lumen ones are $8 on ebay. And I usually go for about 100 to 200 lumens per gallon on a timer for as many hours of light a day don't encourage algae growth.
http://forum.nanfa.o...ing-for-125gal/
P.S.S. Plants need at least 10 ppm dissolved nitrogen to grow well. For our uses nitrate works best (ammonia and nitrite being toxic to fish at 10 ppm). If you test your water and it's 0 ppm ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate, the plants might be starving.
#3
Guest_TheReporter_*
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Posted 15 June 2013 - 02:08 PM
only the roots need to be planted in the soil the rest cant be submerged or it will melt. I made that mistake before.
#4
Guest_Orangespotted_*
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Posted 15 June 2013 - 08:22 PM
What are you fertilizing the tank with, if anything?
#5
Guest_EricaWieser_*
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Posted 15 June 2013 - 09:44 PM
When plants melt in three days, fertilization ain't the problem.What are you fertilizing the tank with, if anything?
#6
Guest_Skipjack_*
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Posted 15 June 2013 - 10:42 PM
Try pruning the foliage. You may not have enough root to support the needs of the foliage.
#7
Guest_Yeahson421_*
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Posted 15 June 2013 - 11:05 PM
Thanks everyone. I'm going to try it again with trimming the leaves, and if it doesn't work this time I'll try it again once I get my LEDs on there, including about 6 blue ones. If I still can't get growth after that, well, I may as well redo the tank anyways, right? Haha!
#8
Guest_EricaWieser_*
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Posted 15 June 2013 - 11:41 PM
It's not the lights. And honestly there are a bunch of lookalike species for you to try before you go through the hassle of breaking down and setting up a tank when you don't know if you're even changing the thing that's killing them or setting it up the same.Thanks everyone. I'm going to try it again with trimming the leaves, and if it doesn't work this time I'll try it again once I get my LEDs on there, including about 6 blue ones. If I still can't get growth after that, well, I may as well redo the tank anyways, right? Haha!
The following are from my own unfortunate experiences accidentally killing plants:
Dramatically different temperature: shock, death in minutes to hours
No nitrogen: melt in days to weeks
Slightly wrong lights: death in weeks, months
Complete blackout of light: easily survive for a week
Wrong fertilization: death in weeks, months, or stunted growth but survive.
Being stuck in the mail: yellow and after three or less days in the mail box, recover
Buried underground: depends how much got buried, death in days to one or two weeks
Alleopathic chemicals: lack of growth, death in about a month to three months.
Dramatically different pH or DH: lack of growth for up to a week, then growth. Or: lack of growth, rotting over the course of days.
Wrong salt concentration: melt in hours to days.
Based on the time scale of death and the dramatic melting within hours you described, the most likely culprits are:
high salt concentration
temperature shock
Big question: Are these the only plants in the tank?
Edited by EricaWieser, 15 June 2013 - 11:44 PM.
#9
Guest_Subrosa_*
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Posted 16 June 2013 - 06:53 AM
Are you certain the plants are dead? Just because they lose their leaves doesn't mean the plant is dead.
#10
Guest_Skipjack_*
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Posted 16 June 2013 - 08:01 AM
This is possible, and speaks to my point. The vegetative part of a plant is somewhat of a mirror image of it's roots. When you mow your lawn, your grass will prune its own roots, it does not benefit by having a large root mass trying to support a small amount of foliage. The opposite holds true when you transplant.Are you certain the plants are dead? Just because they lose their leaves doesn't mean the plant is dead.
#11
Guest_Orangespotted_*
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Posted 16 June 2013 - 10:46 PM
Erika, when I was asking about fertilization, I meant that he might be using something like Flourish Excel, which is known to kill off plants in the family Hydrocharitaceae (edit: like Elodea and Vallisneria, I think you can find older posts in the plant section discussing it).
Edited by Orangespotted, 16 June 2013 - 10:51 PM.
#12
littlen
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Posted 18 June 2013 - 09:33 AM
My 2 cents for what they are worth....
Like many other aquatic plants, Vallisneria have thick, 'fleshy', roots. Are you sure you're not damaging or breaking most of the individual roots when you uproot them from tank A, and replant them in tank B? I encountered this problem a lot when I would transplant Amazon swords. This goes along with what Skipjack is saying. That, once you damage the roots in the transplanting process, they can no longer support all of the foliage.
Like many other aquatic plants, Vallisneria have thick, 'fleshy', roots. Are you sure you're not damaging or breaking most of the individual roots when you uproot them from tank A, and replant them in tank B? I encountered this problem a lot when I would transplant Amazon swords. This goes along with what Skipjack is saying. That, once you damage the roots in the transplanting process, they can no longer support all of the foliage.
Nick L.
#13
Guest_Orangespotted_*
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Posted 21 June 2013 - 09:03 PM
Any progress so far?
#14
Guest_Yeahson421_*
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Posted 21 June 2013 - 11:18 PM
Well, I've been looking around on the internet and have decided to redo the tank with a 3D background and an HMF filter, so I've decided to hold off on trying more plants. I'll showcase the rescape and what success I have in a seperate thread. For anyone else wondering, however, I think my problems were a combination of inadequate acclimation and too long of leaves.
#15
Guest_Orangespotted_*
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Posted 23 June 2013 - 09:09 PM
Fancy! Hope it goes well!
#16
Guest_gerald_*
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Posted 25 June 2013 - 11:20 AM
You might try planting some Val in a shallow container in the old tank where they're doing well, wait a couple weeks for them to get settled in, then move the whole container into the new tank -- reducing transplant stress.
#17
Guest_Joshaeus_*
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Posted 25 June 2013 - 03:20 PM
I guess that means that my flourish excel usage has better stop by the time my amazon frogbit arrives...Erika, when I was asking about fertilization, I meant that he might be using something like Flourish Excel, which is known to kill off plants in the family Hydrocharitaceae (edit: like Elodea and Vallisneria, I think you can find older posts in the plant section discussing it).
#18
Guest_Kanus_*
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Posted 25 June 2013 - 08:49 PM
If it makes you feel better, I have used Excel with both aquarium and wild-collected strains of frogbit and never had any issue.
#19
Guest_Joshaeus_*
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Posted 26 June 2013 - 07:19 AM
Isn't frogbit of the same family as vals, though?
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