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Well poops, I go away for 3 weeks and come back to find my male swordtail and pleco completely gone (poof!) and the hornwort I bought almost completely dead and wrapped around a filter. Welcome home]]

Anyways, I'm not sure if the plants I got were hornwort or not, the person at the lfs told me she wasn't sure. However, it looked like the pictures of hornwort that I've seen online. I got them to reduce my nitrates, which were 120+ (I didn't have live plants save one sword for 4-5 years), and I thought that my aquarium flourescent overhead would provide enough light. Could something in the vacation food pyramids my family used have killed the plants? Could the fish have eaten just enough of the plant to kill it? Could it have gobbled up my nitrate so fast that it then starved to death (I doubt it, but I'm not ruling out the possibility.) I had bought 2 bunches of the plants for the 40 gallon I have, plus the sword that was already in there.

Furthermore, should I worry about nitrates/algae coming back? I have swordtails that seem to be keeping the algae under control, if only for now.

[span class="edited"][Edited by 2004-07-31 07:57][/span]

Hi,
Hornwart, as any floating plant, will reduce the
nitrates in the tank. With its demise, the nitrates
would have started to rise again, and with you not
being there to do water changes, chances are it
could have risen quite high.

Nitrates are the final result of the Nitrogen Cycle.
As long as you have fish, fish waste, fish food,
and dying plants, you will have the end result, nitrates.

Live plants will convert it to their nutrients and
HELP to keep them low. But, over stocking, or over
feeding, will just make a bad situation worse.

For the floating plants, I would have at least 2 watts
per gallon of lighting. The flourscent light should
be around 6700K temperature, or be labled DAYLIGHT or
SUNLIGHT for best plant growth. The standard "plant"
bulbs are pricey and can give off a "tinted" light
that can wash out the plant colors.

Frank


-->>> The Confidence of Amateurs, is the Envy of Professionals <<<--

Absolutely. Those vacation food tablets are HORRIBLE. Do not use them EVER. If you can't afford an automatic feeder, it is better not to feed them at all for a 3 week trip.

Vacation feeders cause ammonia spikes...they're nasty and do more harm than good...stay away from 'em...

If your nitrates bottom out, your plants may suffer a bit, BGA might take over, etc, but they shouldn't DIE in 3 weeks...

Hornwort WILL grow without tank lighting...just the light that shines into the tank...but it does grow really well with decent tank lighting

I doubt the fish ate the plants...they tend to not eat hornwort for some reason. My cories love to sit in my hornwort, but they won't eat it...nor will any of my other fish...

There are 2 kinds of hornwort, One falls apart easily, one is tough. Some plants that look somewhat similar to hornwort and could be confused with it are Asian Ambulia]http://www.plantgeek.net/plantguide_viewer.php?id=4[/link], and [link=Cabomba

I'm thinking that you might have Cabomba because it's a common high light plant and it looks very similar to hornwort. It would have fallen apart and died quickly with low light.

There are 2 species of hornwort, they look somewhat similar, and they both have the same requirements. Are either of these what you had? THIS]http://www.plantgeek.net/plantguide_viewer.php?id=51[/link], or [link=THIS?

HTH