# Semi-aquatic Plants



## jessiepbg (Nov 13, 2010)

I seem to have a lot more luck with semi-aquatic plants than aquatic plants. I had some anachris when I first started my tank and it died within a few weeks, all the leaves started to disintegrate except for a few little buds of new growth which seemed to be doing fine. I threw that out because I was impatient and bought ribbon plant, a semi-aquatic and it's been doing great. I also had some hornwort when I first started, but I think I killed that just from using it as cover in a QT tank. I dumped needles like crazy even when it was under proper lighting. I bought a mixed pot of plants, a few of which I think are proper aquatics and one of which I know is a semi-aquatic. Again, the semi-aquatic is doing wonderful, even with the algae competing with it. The full-aquatics are kind of disintegrating in the stems. I keep pulling out leaves that are attached by what look like threads where the stem should be. I bought a new bunch of anachris a few weeks ago and it died again. I finally gave up on it a few days ago and cut off the new growth that was thriving and just let it float in my tank. I think it's grown some, but that just might be me being hopeful. 

My pH is pretty high, 8.2 on a good day, so I don't know if that affects the sorts of plants I can keep? I have good fluorescent lighting. I can't remember the kelvin rating, but it was within the range suggested to me last time I had plant problems. 

My photoperiod is probably around 12-15hours, since the timer I bought for them is awful and unreliable and I leave the house at 7am every morning and rarely get back before 10pm. I'm going to assume that's where my algae problem came from too. If anyone knows of a good, reliable, easy to program timer, I would love to know. This one is Zilla brand, took forever to program, and just flat out doesn't cycle on and off. It's been in night mode (on, apparently, even though that's the opposite of what I programmed) for about a month now. It's just an expensive power strip with a clock anymore. 

Ok, now I'm just tired, grumbly, and rambling. I'm going to go to sleep, so if anyone has any tips for me, I'd love to see them in the morning!


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## Hadouken441 (Jan 27, 2010)

Im not trying to mean at all, but theres more to keeping plants that just putting it in a tank. 

For your hornwart in the QT tank, if theres nothing in there to give a bioload, then the plant has no nutrients from anything. Just tap water isnt really enough. If your cleaning your tanks too much then the same problem there, your getting rid of any other nutrients for any kind of growth. Lighting is too long. By about 6 hours.

If the anacharis has little bioload from the water, and none from the roots, it would start to die off a little. 

Get some Seachem. It has a little of mico and macro nutrients. It should help


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## jessiepbg (Nov 13, 2010)

Oops, forgot to mention that I started adding Aqueon plant food about 3 weeks ago for just that reason. I'm putting in 10 mL every week after I do my water change. Does the Seachem brand work better? I love their products, I was just being cheap when I bought the Aqueon plant food. 

I don't think the hornwort died of malnutrition, it died of lack of light. There were between 2 and 4 cories in the little 1 gallon QT tank and even with water changes twice a day, I think there was plenty of fish mess in there. At that point I was much more worried about saving the cories and keeping them comfortable that I was about killing the plant, so it kind of got thrown around and abused for about a week. 

My anachris doesn't have roots, is it supposed to? That might be my biggest problem. Even the stuff straight out of the store had no evidence of root growth. I went all plant propagator on it and cut off the brown tip at the bottom to encourage root growth, assuming it was just like rooting a cutting in soil. I didn't feel comfortable using IBA on it since I have no idea how that affects fishies. Within a few days, the tip had turned brown again and no roots had started to form, so I just left them alone until they died. The fresh growth that I cut off them did the same thing within days.


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## Thunderloon (Feb 6, 2011)

just to be sure, we're talking about this stuff:
http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/prod_display.cfm?c=768+780&pcatid=780

I'm thinking there may be a hardness issue and you might need to flush the gravel where you're going to plant it (stir with a knife) if your gravel is more than an inch thick.

If it comes with a browned tip, the store is fail. 

High hardness can keep aspiration from occurring and will result in the plants cooking themselves to death.

I'm totally uninspired by my Aqueon fertilizer. I dumped a whole small bottle into a ten gallon tank with three watts per gallon lighting for 20 hours a day and algae didn't even grow. Hell, the aponogotens didn't even respond. Ofl likes seachem's tabs and I do as well, they're just a bit of a pain to get stuck in light gravel.

How much of your hardness is calcium, btw?


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