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Hi guys,

I have a lot of crypts (mostly green wendtii) covering the foreground area in my 42g tank. They've been there for over 5 months, growing nicely under 30w of NO flourescent light (yep, that's less than 1wpg). Just this past weekend I upgraded the light to 2x36w PC flourescent (about 1.7wpg) and I've noticed a few days later that some of the crypt leaves are showing the same melting symptoms as when you move crypts around. I was under the impression that crypt melts occur mainly because you're disturbing the root system. But I didn't move them at all during the last water change (same time I changed the lights). All I did was add some root tabs, which I've done before without any ill effects.

Can melting occur as a response to the light change as well? The new lighting can still be considered low light, so I didn't think it was going to cause a problem. If not, any other ideas what could be going on? Other fert dosing regimen has not changed either (Flourish, phosphate, & equilibrium weekly; no NO3 as the tank is slightly overstocked, NO3 level is at least 10-20ppm every time I test).

Thanks!

Last edited by upikabu at 24-Jan-2006 20:02

-P

Crypts will react to any change in the environment. Wendtii's are real melty types.

They will come back and fairly quickly. Chances are with the additional light they'll come back bigger and stronger.

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Some days you're the pigeon and some days you're the statue.

Remember that age and treachery will always triumph over youth and ability.

Hi upikabu,

I wouldn't doubt that the light upgrade may have had an effect on them. IME crypt wendtii was kind of picky. When I went from about 1.3WPG to 2.4 way back when they did something similar and came back with significantly shrunken leaves, not nearly as large as they were beforehand. Maybe it's the plant trying to compensate for the new amount of light? In other words the plant is thinking, "There is X amount of light thus I will grow leaves Y large to get the most I can use".. ya know, needing a certain amount of leaf space to take in a certain amount of light? There's now more light so it can tak ein the same amount of light with smaller leaves? Your guess is as good as mine, though I have seen it before.


EDIT: Just read what Bensaf wrote. Well, it'll be interesting to see if they come back with bigger leaves or smaller leaves... though if I were a betting man...

Last edited by nowherman6 at 24-Jan-2006 20:23

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Back in the saddle!

Actually Nowhere makes an intersting point. I used to grow Wendtiis as big as the ones we saw Aquarista, 8 inches tall no problem. Now that I have more light they don't get that big anymore. Which is a PITA as I re-planted them in places thinking they'd get that big. ]:|

Certainly with more light they are not as big as they used to be.

But on the other hand I've got a few in really dark hideaway corners and they are tiny !!! So that kind of ruins the less light=bigger leaf theory.

It may have something to do with nutrients rather then lights. High light tanks tend to be higher in nutrients then low light (we add more).

Crypts are very adaptable and strange plants.

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Some days you're the pigeon and some days you're the statue.

Remember that age and treachery will always triumph over youth and ability.

Thanks for the quick responses, Bernard & Nowhere.
Good to know you've experienced something similar during your light change, Nowhere. I actually don't mind at all if the new leaves are smaller in this case, as the plants are in the foreground. Let's see what happens. You can place your bets now.

-P

A couple things can shrink wendtiis, right? If you want them smaller I bet if you took away some of their substrate they'd stay pretty small. Little substrate depth = small root system = small plant. The question is, does that also equal a healthy plant?

Anyway, I hope them grow back nicely for ya.

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Back in the saddle!

All,

I'm happy to report that the wendtii green in my 42g did stop melting about a week or so after the light upgrade, and that the new leaves are indeed smaller than before.

However, I'm having another crypt melt problem and a stranger one at that. It's the big beautiful crypt wendtii red in my 23g]http://www.fishprofiles.com/logbooks/tanks.aspx?uid=10329&tank=42[/link] that's been around for 6+ months. This past weekend I noticed that about 1/3 of the leaves (both old and new) have or were starting to melt. The thing is nothing major has really changed in that tank recently. Light upgrade was almost a month ago, and so was the [link=DIY CO2 introduction.

The only possible causes I could think of (something new/different over the last week):
a) I upped the 2nd & 3rd nitrate & phosphate weekly dosages from 2ppm to 3ppm (first dosage after water change remained at 5ppm) to correspond with increased plant mass (I've added new plants this week). I read some crypts are sensitive to excess nitrate levels, but I don't see how 2ppm extra a week would be considered "excess"? Then again, who knows?
b) The substrate underneath the crypt has been exhausted of nutrients (there's a thin layer of laterite under the river sand and I haven't added any root tabs near the crypt in months). I've added a flourish tab under the crypt yesterday. Are crypts such heavy root feeders?
c) It's been raining for a week so the weather has been unusually cool outside (tank temp has dropped from 28C to 25C). Are crypts sensitive to temp changes? I know they come from the tropics where the weather doesn't change much. But I really don't think 3C is that big a change in temp.

Any ideas what could be happening? In the meantime I've pruned off all the melted leaves (even the ones that just started to melt). It was a sad exercise to see my majestic crypt reduced to its current state.

-P

As I said they'll melt with any kind of change.

But it's ok , it's usually a one time deal. They'll come back just as strong.

---

Some days you're the pigeon and some days you're the statue.

Remember that age and treachery will always triumph over youth and ability.

Thanks Bernard.
I guess I was just trying to figure out what caused it so I won't make the same mistake again next time (e.g. keep adding root tabs on regular basis, etc.). From what I've been reading, seems like wendtii is one of the "meltiest" of all crypts.

BTW, I forgot to mention this, but the crypt potenderiifolia I have in the same tank also had one melting leaf (out of 5) this weekend. That's really strange because this crypt has never melted on me even when I moved it around from tank to tank. Even the tropica description says that it "rarely suffers from so-called cryptocoryne disease". That's the one that makes me think something strange is going on in my tank.

-P