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Hey,

I just spent over 80 bucks on plants and within a week all the leaves had fallen off or changed colour! Lots of them grew and grew until they hit the top of the water then they died! i feed them when i feed the fish! what's going on?!?!

Can ppl please tell me there fav plants...and how to care for those particular plants...I think i'm gonna stick to short plants from now on! like grasses and stuff...

Please Help...

hi,
a couple of questions to help understand why your plants died.
What types of plants were they?
What kind of light do you have?
How often do you do water changes?
What were you feeding your plants-
product, how much, how often?
How long are your tank lights on?
What are the parameters of the tank- size,
temperature, occupants, filtration?
Thanks, this should help a lot in
figuring why your plants died.


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Sounds like not enough light to me.

What size tank ? How much lighting ? What plants ?
Can only help with this info on hand.
Water parameters if you have them.
Sounds like the plants may be stretching for the light rather then growing healthily.

i feed them when i feed the fish

Feed them what? Plants don't usually need "feeding" unless there is a lot of light and/or Co2 supplementation. Your water should already contain enough nutrients.

...I think i'm gonna stick to short plants from now on! like grasses and stuff...

They won't do well either. Probably worse. Most short grasses require a lot of good quality light.

Sounds like you'd be better holding on to your money to sort your lighting out first. You can also save a bit by not buying anymore plant "food"


EDIT: Sorry Sneaky we must have been typing at the same time so I repeated some of the questions

Last edited by bensaf at 17-Jun-2005 21:30

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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.

Buying plants is alot like buying fish. Different plants require different conditions and you should research the types of plants and their requirements before you buy. You wouldn't go out and spend $80 on a discus when you didn't know how to take care of it would you? Without certain extra care compared to your other fish it would probably die. Hairgrass is hard to keep alive. It requires lots of light, nutrients, and co2 is very heplful. Read the sticky at the top of the page for info on lighting and basic plant requirements. You would do best with at least 1 watt per gallon of lighting before you even attempt any plants. My favorite foreground plant that survives a variety of conditions is aquatic clover aka four leaf clover or scientifically Marsilea crenata. In high light it grows short(~4" ) and gets 4 leaves in my low light tanks it grows taller(~6" ) and gets only 1-2 leaves per stem.

Last edited by sham at 18-Jun-2005 14:09

Thanks for the advice ppl...

However it cvan't have been my light...it's worth $500 and it's a proper plant globe (well...that's what the lfs said) and it's a twin globe system! I have the light on for roughly 10-12 a day..(that to much?) and i feed them any plant food from the lfs. I forget the plant names, i'll try and get the names for u then we can sort it out hehe

Is it possible to post a pic of the tank?

$500 for the lighting...sounds like metal Halides. It could be the fish destroying the plants. Really need more details of your tank before the problem can be solved.

Mango [/font]

is the light setup european they ushually cost alot more

Edit: or was that a typo

my guess is the ferts if it wasnt a typo

Last edited by Alex at 20-Jun-2005 04:57

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''All the clown fish and yellow tangs in the world cant save you now!''

hmm...yeah..there r tons of questions needed to be answered b4 we can arrive at a conclusion.

well, i say..stick with java moss, java fern and anubias....those r hardy enuf.

Hi Opiate,
telling us how much the light cost doesnt do us much good we need to know how many watts it is.
Also, you only really need to fertilize your plants once a month, too much fertilizer can burn plants.

By the fact that your light was so expensive, I would guess your lighting has nothing to do with why the plants died.
Stop fertilizing every day.
Fertilize once a month, or at most once every 2 weeks.
Did you trim the plants? Ones that reach the water surface my need to be trimmed.
My guess is, you had a whole bunch of semi-aquatic plants, that just lived their lives out as long as they could underwater. A good website to look up plants is
[link=http://www.tropica.com]http://www.tropica.com" style="COLOR: #00FF00[/link]

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The best way is not to fertilizer unless you see a deficiency. This site is useful [link=http://www.csd.net/~cgadd/aqua/art_plant_nutrient.htm]http://www.csd.net/~cgadd/aqua/art_plant_nutrient.htm" style="COLOR: #00C0C0[/link]. The only reason to really have a fertilizing schedule is so you don't forget to add something that's needed. Most of the time I just watch the plants especially my big amazon sword and add what they seem to need at each water change. I dose something about twice a week. On a newly planted tank with few plants and none established they probably won't need any fertilizer at all. I guess it could also be possible to have too much light and burn the plants that way. Knowing the wattage and what plants you bought would still really help.

Sorry guys i dunno what watage etc.. my light is! all i know is that i paid top dollar for it! I can't post pics of my tank cause i'm not a paying member! (my tank is filthy atm anyways)
Is java moss that bright dark green (if that makes sense)moss that flourishes in everyones tank??? the only prob with moss tho is that it gets into my filters to easily, otherwise if it's the stuff i think it is i love it! not to mention food gets stuck in it all the time! what are the other java plants??

...the hell?

Well do you know if the light is compact flourescent, metal halide, etc? To make it simpler what bulb shape does it have? How many and if they are tubes(bent U shape for cf light) how long are they?

...the hell?

That was UGLY_GURL logged in on my name...

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

Opiate, you can send me the pictures of your tank throught email...[a href="mailto:mango4jade@gmail.com"]mango4jade@gmail.com[/a]

mango

cheers will do...godda get decent pics first heheand as i mentioned earlier tis filthy and pretty bare! seeing i ripped all the plants out hehe! However i'd love to send u some pics, wen i get some good ones