Plant Newbie - Anacharis Issues

[Leto]

I know Anacharis is about the easiest plant to have - but somehow or other I have managed to screw it up and could use some advice.


The information: I have a 20 High tank, 1 Java Fern, 4 bunches of Anacharis and a snail infestation. I am currently in the middle of a long fishless cycle (from scratch), so I regularly add ammonia and the Nitrites are shooting up and hopefully they will peak sooner rather than later.

One thing of note is that I have roughly 30ppm NitrAtes strait from the tap water. The PH is 7.2, the Temp is 78 degrees....I have not tested the GH or KH.

Originally I had just the stock 15watt light strip (0.75wpg), and had bought one bunch of about 6 stems of Anacharis that sat in that low light (12 hours on, 12 off) for a week before upgrading to 3 15 watt fluorescent bulbs (putting me over 2wpg or so). Since then I have added the additional Anacharis strips.

I did not sanitize the plants and with the second group of Anacharis have gotten a minor infestation of some kind of snail They are apparently thriving (they have grown quite noticeably from barely specks to 1/4" snails in only a week). I don't think they are eating the plants, they mostly seem to cruise the glass and the aquarium decorations.

Ok - finally the problems.


3 of the 4 bunches of anacharis are showing quite a lot of decay....turning light brown and more-or-less disintegrating in the tank. The filter has only been in there for about 4 weeks or so but it is already getting clogged up and particles are floating all through the water.

The gravel already needs cleaned from all the plant particles but I am hesitant to clean the gravel while I am in the middle of trying to cycle the tank.

The truly odd thing is that the 4th bunch of Anacharis is doing absolutely fantastic. It is a vibrant green and shows only very, very little decay (and only at the very bottom of the stems)...and has grown probably 3-6 inches (depending on the stem) in only a short period. This particular plant looks different from the other 3 as well....the leaves are spaced a lot thinner, and are smaller.

On the 3 bunches that are doing badly the stems are thicker, the leaves are more densely placed and are larger - is it possible that I have 2 different species? Or could it be they were just grown under different conditions?

I regret that I do not have pictures I can post atm - perhaps tomorrow I can borrow my friends digital camera.

Tomorrow I think I am going to yank out the 3 that are doing badly and trim them up pretty drastically...probably take them from 3 decently sized bunches to only 2 small ones, mostly made up of newer sprouts that seem to be more healthy than their parent stems.

One of them even has some kind of brown filmy funk kinda attached, floating around in the water off its leaves - I have zero idea what that might be about.

My main concern is that the rotting plant debris and particles are polluting my aquarium too badly - I am using a light colored gravel in my tank and the top of the gravel is even getting dark spots on it from the stuff. ...So with that in mind I am anxious to trim the bad parts out and try to do some damage control with respect to the pollution levels in my tank from the plants.

My main questions are: Am I doing something wrong? (I have no fertilizer at all yet btw, just the water and the light)...

Should I float the anacharis that I trim and save or bunch it again?

Any idea why one bunch would do so awesome while 3 others appear as if they are dying and rotting where they sit?

Any advice on exactly how to trim the anacharis, especially the new stems branching off the parent stems? (I have never done that before - would just as soon not kill the plants if I can help it hehe)

Seriously - any advice would be very, very much appreciated.

Anacharis is cheap, but I would much rather have healthy plants that are not rotting in my tank vs just buying new anacharis once a month. I should probably note that the problem maybe isn't as quite as severe as it sounds - for the most part the plants are still greenish, but there is enough rotting debris to cloud up the water with particles and really clutter up the gravel at the bottom - and that is plenty bad enough.

Thanks guys.

If I could have the 3 bunches that are doing badly do as well as the one that is already doing so awesome, I'd love it.

I will try to post a couple pics soon.

Any advice or suggestions about how or what to do differently would be most welcome.

 

[phanmc]

I'm no anacharis expert but I'm guessing that its insufficient light. A 20 g tall tank is the same height as a 30 g regular tank and the 15w Fluorescent lights just isn't penetrating deep enough even though you have 3 of them.

Try floating the plants, anacharis takes much of its nutrients from the water, they have a very weak root system so they can survive fine just floating. If their conditions improve then you know its the light.

I've used anacharis once in a low light setting. They were very bushy when purchased and I also had them start to rot. Eventually, some new shoots grew out of them and the leaves were like your surviving bunch (smaller, curved down, and spaced further apart). I assumed it was the lighting or lack of that caused the change.

 

[daveedka]

Anachris IMe does fine in lower light, I wonder about nutrients in general. You abviously have plenty of N if you are doing a fishless, but Po4 K and traces may be very scarce if you aren't supplementing. The snails will be a huge blessing for you, they eat dead plant matter, extra food and algea. they are probably exploding in population because of the extreme algea growth created when doing fishless with the lights on. Remeber Algae does not have to be green to be algae, nor does it have to be big enough to see for a snail to eat it. Cross your fingers and hope the population of snails gets very high before your tank turns green. Worry about reducung snail number later when things are better balanced.

I don't know that I'd reccomend fertilizing a tank while it goes through fishless. The algea risk is already huge, and adding nutrients will only compound that. If you still have green anachris, I'd either move it to a bucket and get it going good there, or just hope it gets through the next couple of weeks until you can better balance nutrients. On a positive note, if there is a plant that will survive and thrive in a poorly balance tank it is anachris. If it were me I'd just hold out until the cycle was complete and work with what was left.

Flaoting or planted, I'd say you have plenty of light. I personally don't like Anachris as a floating plant, it is far too messy for me. However it will grow floating and serve a good purpose that way.

As far as the debris, remove what you can, your snails will deal with the rest. Snails are the ultimate mulm makers in the universe. they will reduce your dead plant matter to minute particles and allow it to be digested by other processes. My heavy snail tanks seldome if ever have any large debris that lasts. My non snail tank is a constant battle with dead leaves. Remember you are starting out anew, so estabilishing a reasonable amount of Mulm is desirous.
Dave

 

[midiamin]

Couple of suggestions. If you are planting the anacharis in bunches, you whould separate them and plant as single strands. I also suggest you float the Anacharis first to see if it will sprout root, then plant it. I don't know know if you have fish in this tank but a drop in temp may also make a difference.

thePlantMan cometh..............

 

[Leto]

Thanks for all the advice guys Going to be putting it to use.

I trimmed out some of the worst spots and floated a couple more stems/sprouts but mostly left it alone.

I suspect that the brown in the tank is some kind of brown algae or something. No visible green algae in the tank at all, and really nothing much on the glass either. What is visible is the gravel turning brown and some kind of brown filmy stuff off the middle anacharis bunch. I can only guess that is algae, it scoops out easy with a net and basically amounts to almost nothing at all when not in the water.


I do have at least one question at this point:

Anachris IMe does fine in lower light, I wonder about nutrients in general. You abviously have plenty of N if you are doing a fishless, but Po4 K and traces may be very scarce if you aren't supplementing.

Ok, I know I don't have too many specifics about my water (aside from temp, PH, Ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrate) - but at least in general terms, what type of nutrients/suppliments do Anacharis need to be healthy?

I'm not going to go pourning fertilizers in the tank while still in a fishless cycle (which as of today might actually be showing signs of nearing its end btw!) - but I am about to order some things I need anyway in the next day or two, and would like to order some kind of liquid fertilizer when I do it so I have it when I'm ready to start adding a little.

Flourish looks awesome, but is there anything else I might need to think about adding? Like the Flourish Iron or Potassium or something? (I had heard the Flourish Excel is not very friendly to Anacharis for some reason.)

If nothing else I'll probably just order the Flourish and use small amounts of that once my fish settle in.



A little off-topic maybe but something else I'd like to ask that may be Anacharis related:

Testing my water today I noticed something bizzare.

My Ammonia tested at basically zero....My NitrItes tested significantly lower than they had been (around a 1ppm or below actually)....so I assumed that when testing the Nitrates I'd see a pretty significant jump. Unless the Nitrites were taken out of my water from some other process, then the Nitrates would have to have a significant spike, yes?

Well, this is the confusing thing: Strait out of my tap the Nitrates test at 20-25ppm. That is one of the big reasons I wanted to get some living plants in the tank - to help suck up some Nitrates. But when I tested the Aquarium this evening, where I expected to see a huge Nitrate spike from the large volume of Nitrites being processed by the Bacteria, what I found instead was only ~7ppm Nitrates. ....considering my Tap water starts out at 20-25ppm, and I expected a huge jump from the Nitrogen Cycle playing out its course, I was very very surprised and actually kindof confused.


Is it even possible that 4 struggling bunches of Anacharis could suck that amount of Nitrates out of the water? I was half expecting to see 80ppm Nitrates or so and instead found only 7ppm.

If that is a sign of things to come, I'd gladly take it

If some other process had altered the chemistry of the water then the whole cycle might be inturrupted (today was the first and only day I had tested a drop in Nitrites, but the drop was significant.)

 

[phanmc]

I do have at least one question at this point:

Ok, I know I don't have too many specifics about my water (aside from temp, PH, Ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrate) - but at least in general terms, what type of nutrients/suppliments do Anacharis need to be healthy?

I'm not going to go pourning fertilizers in the tank while still in a fishless cycle (which as of today might actually be showing signs of nearing its end btw!) - but I am about to order some things I need anyway in the next day or two, and would like to order some kind of liquid fertilizer when I do it so I have it when I'm ready to start adding a little.

Flourish looks awesome, but is there anything else I might need to think about adding? Like the Flourish Iron or Potassium or something? (I had heard the Flourish Excel is not very friendly to Anacharis for some reason.)

Plants need ammonia/nitrates (which is why you're seeing low levels of nitrates), phosphate, potassium, and mineral nutrients such as iron and magnesium. The majority of these are generated by the fishes or are already present in your tap water, so you're replenishing the tank every time you do a water change. Normally in a low light setup, you don't need to do any additional dosing if you keep up with your weekly water change. Still, its a good idea to have at least some trace fertilizer like regular Flourish (not Excel) on hand in case the plants don't look so healthy.

Flourish Excel and CO2 injection will give the plant additional CO2 for photosynthesis and is effective even in low light tanks. Don't know if Excel has a negative impact on anacharis however.

 

[Gambusia]

I've never had good success with anacharis in my tanks but very good success with it in my patio pond.

You'll need lots of light and nutrients for it to flourish.

Java fern does very well in my low nutrient and low light tanks.