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After reaquascaping a while back, my banana plant lost all its leaves. Actually, I made a post on that at the time, not knowing if it would come back.

I was assured that it would, and it HAS tried twice now, but each time, the leaves are tiny and pale. They go limp within a few days, then disappear. How can I get it to come back and why are the leaves dying? I also just removed one of the "bananas" that went mushy... barring that one, the others still look healthy.

This was a large, healthy, gorgeous specimen before moving things around, why is it now falling apart?

Same happened with my crinum plant (forget the type, the one with really thin, rippled leaves)... leaves just started breaking off, and now the thick base of the plant is decaying. I think that one's a goner. *sigh*

I do need to order some plants, but I don't want to do so until I figure out what's going on with the ones I have. My water sprite and dwarf lilies seem to be flourishing. The lloydiella is faring as well as it normally does... just not sure what's up with these two plants.

All the fish seem healthy, but I haven't done water testing in a while, so I don't have numbers to give you. What might cause the decay and/or prevent plants from regrowing? I'm all confuzzled... the only thing that's changed since reaquascaping (besides the actually moving things around) is that the noon-time siesta of lights-off time went from two hours to one, because I added ottos after a period of having no algae eater.

~Meow. Thus spoke the cat.~

Kitten:
You ask a question for which I can't give you a 100% answer. Perhaps I can give you direction.
Not knowing your tank, nor what exactly you changed prevents me from identifying your problem. Small pale leaves may very well identify a lack of nutrition or a lack of light. If these two plants were rooted and you disturbed the root system, then they might be in transplant shock. It also may be due to a nutritional imbalance, or lack of light. You mentioned that you changed the photoperiod. It seem unreasonable to assume, but this change may be large enough to affect these two plants. It's a bit of a puzzle because you say all your other plants are doing fine. did you change anything else, such as add a new fertilizer or change the substrate?
Did your water supply change in any way. As an example, copper is an excellant killer of aquatic plants. If copper levels rose, either through new house piping or a change made by your water supplier, that may be the cause. A change in the direct amount the light these plants received (i.e. they were in the open, but know they're shaded, or vice versa) would also have an adverse affect.
Hope this give you some guidance as to what to look for.
-Wayne

Small pale leaves may very well identify a lack of nutrition or a lack of light. The banana plant shows pale leaves when it TRIES to regrow, the crinum leaves just started breaking away and then the plant decayed to nothingness.

If these two plants were rooted and you disturbed the root system, then they might be in transplant shock. I could understand that for the banana plant, but I think the crinum is a lost cause... I'm so peeved about these plants, because, of course, they're my favorite ones.

It also may be due to a nutritional imbalance, or lack of light. You mentioned that you changed the photoperiod. It seem unreasonable to assume, but this change may be large enough to affect these two plants. It's a bit of a puzzle because you say all your other plants are doing fine. I'm not sure about the nutrition, as all I do is dose fertilizers maybe every other week along with having some undergravel ferts. That hasn't changed in the aquascaping.

Did you change anything else, such as add a new fertilizer or change the substrate? Nope.

Did your water supply change in any way. As an example, copper is an excellant killer of aquatic plants. If copper levels rose, either through new house piping or a change made by your water supplier, that may be the cause. No, not that I know of.

A change in the direct amount the light these plants received (i.e. they were in the open, but know they're shaded, or vice versa) would also have an adverse affect. Both plants were somewhat hidden, but the crinum, at least, should have been getting the same amount of light. If anything, the banana plant gets more light than it did before... that's the main reason I moved it: It was this GORGEOUS plant half hidden by the watersprite. Now it's all sad and blah. Such a lovely specimen is half dead... How do I save it?

~Meow. Thus spoke the cat.~

Kitten:

It's very tough to diagnose. I wish I could be more help, but I've not had a lot of personal experience when it comes to sick plants. Plants either grow or don't grow for me.
I ran a search to see if I could find some more information for you.
Here are some sites that might give you more guidance:
http://paul.aaquaria.com/conditions/probs.htm
http://badmanstropicalfish.com/plant_problems.html
http://www.aquariumpharm.com/articles/plants.asp
http://www.csd.net/~cgadd/aqua/art_plant_nutrient.htm
http://faq.thekrib.com/plant-qa.html

Banana plants and crinum have something in common: they grow out of a big "storage space" of food and energy, the "onion" of the crinum and the "bananas" of the banana. I'd say that if you haven't changed much of anything and the plants seem to be slowly giving up life, the most obvious possibility is that the original vibrant growth was the result of using up the reserves in the bulb and are now petering out, lacking the high light and nutrients they need to refresh the store. This is much more common with the Madagascar Lace plant but it's fairly common IME with any high-light bulb plant. Just one more possibility - of course I can't say for sure - but to me it seems the most likely.

-Molly
Visit shelldwellers.com!

Hmm... well, it's just odd that this happened to both plants at the same time, considering the banana plant has been in my tank since I first got plants and the crinum is a relatively new addition. Sigh.

I just don't know what's going on. I was going to add more plants, but since I don't know what's going on with these, I'm kind of leery to do so.

~Meow. Thus spoke the cat.~

I have the same issues w/ some of my banana plants. The ones in my 55 gallon tank have been doing great again, so I'm thinking of moving them all into there. The other tanks require more water changes and cleaning, so perhaps that's why they haven't done as well for me.
I'm so not a plant person, haha.

Christina