SAE Pennywort Update

[Hollygirl]

Well the SAE's love zucchini but still like the pennywort. Now they are eating the roots, and a lot of the pennywort ends up unattached. I now have quite a bit of pennywort pieces floating, and am using a veggie clip to group them in the corner. Looks like I will be adding hornwort after all. Here is a pic of the pennywort - notice how the little roots are missing? (most of them anyway)

 

[Lupin]

Wow! I've never seen SAE's capable of such damage.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Well two things come to mind. The first is that certain fish find specific plants to be candy. I know for sure that swordtails think dwarf hairgrass is candy. You can't keep the two in the same tank. So perheps SAEs are that way with hydrocotyle. Interesting as they are from Asia and the plant is S.A. so the two normally do not live together.

An equal possibility is that you have some algae that grows on the plants that you can't quite see but they can. They are not going after the plant but it suffers as a side effect of their wanting whats on it. If you have a magnifying glass, take a look at the plants and roots in the water and see what you spot.

 

[Hollygirl]

Good idea. I heard that pennywort roots can harbor a lot of algae so maybe that's it. Thanks!

 

[Bk718]

also good thing pennywort can still grow great without the roots.. so let them enjoy it.. as long as they dont actually destroy the plants themselves

 

[Hollygirl]

One of them eats the leaves. Notice the nibbled leaf at the top in the pic? LOL! The plant has new growth, and the clippings are doing well too.

 

[Bk718]

ahh yee i see it lol when mine was floating my mollies used to nibble on it alot, but with its fast growth its hard to notice any loss.

 

[Hollygirl]

ahh yee i see it lol when mine was floating my mollies used to nibble on it alot, but with its fast growth its hard to notice any loss.

I'm hoping the plant grows faster than the fish can eat. You would think the zucchini feedings would slow them down but it doesn't. At feeding time the 5 of them look like dolphins since they skim the water surface for flake food too.

 

[Bk718]

do you have the pennywort in the open?? try placing it in back of the tank or behind blocked by some other plant so maybe the sae's attention will be redirected to... well what ever else it is sae's do...

 

[Hollygirl]

I had the pennywort off to the side, toward the back and center of the tank, and another strand on the other side. The lone strand on the opposite side is completely gone. I'll just wait and see how bad it gets. I put some hornwort near it so that if I lose all of the pennywort I will still have something green in that corner.