Fake plants are nasty!

gmiller1122

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Jul 6, 2005
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After a few months, my fake plant leaves are turning black (at first, they turned brown). I have scrubbed them, but the color is permanent. It looks like mold -- yuk. :mad:

I didn't want to worry about a lot of live plants (I have one -- another one already died), but I definitely don't want to look at these ugly things. So, I plan to cut the "stems" off of the decorations they are attached to, and see about a few more live plants. I'll probably kill them, too, but it's worth a shot!

Anyone else have the same problems with fake fauna?
 
I have some of the same problem. My fake plants turn brown but then I can wash it off. I finally had to get live plants because I didn't want to clean them anymore! I recommend swords or something like that. Hope everything goes well!
 
I have found that at first, you get all that nasty stuff on everything...but as the tank matures...as long as you aren't overstocked or overfeed or anything...most of that goes away and an occasional scrub once every few months is all that's needed.

My daughter has a tank in her room...10gallon...been there since Christmas 2003 and I hardly have to do anything with it. Once a month do a gravel vac and add water as it evaporates...She only has 1 glowlight tetra, 1 fancy guppy and 2 emerald corys in it and feeds only once a day. The decorations are all fake and look very nice actually. ONly a small amount of algae on the tops of the rock and a few of the plants.
 
I found that with a mild mixture of bleach I can clean the plants right up. After letting them soak a little while the algae is gone. I then soak them in water with extra dechlorinator a few times and then put them back in the tank.
 
I do what puffernewbee does and it works really well.
 
Interesting...I'll give that solution a try.

I also guess it has something to do with the quality of the material. Maybe I just bought the cheap stuff!!!
 
I too have fake plants in my tank - those silk plants.
The problem I face is that these plants look brighter when out of water than when in it :sad: I wonder why

Suby
 
what kind do you guys have, i have enough things to worry about so my tanks have mostly silk or plastic plants, only problem is after a while the silk plants lose their leaves and thats after a few years with rougher fish. so now i have silk with the smaller and quality plastic ones for the cichlids. with natural gravel and a nice background it looks nice. i understock, feed little, and regular maintence so i dont have any algae problesm to gunk up my plants at all.
 
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