Anacharis leaves turning transparent

[Todd2]

I planted the Anacharis on Wednesday. The heater I got with the tank crapped out and went up to 85 F on friday morning so I put my other 50 W heater in there (its a 20g) and ordered a 100W heater. The current temp is 76 F. When I got them all the leaves were green, but now all the leaves are transparent, its getting worse by the day. Lighting is 1.9 [acronym:af673e4bfb="Watts Per Gallon"]wpg[/acronym:af673e4bfb] and its in a sand substrate with laterite and peat moss at the bottom. I'm not fertilizing or anything. Lights are on from 9 to 8:30. The java fern is turning brown at the edges. Can anyone help me with this. Isn't anacharis supposed to be hardy? Why are they dying?

[madasafish]

Anacharis is a very hardy plant, indeed. I had 0.8 [acronym:43dd2a50fa="Watts Per Gallon"]wpg[/acronym:43dd2a50fa] on my first 55 and the anacharis was growing like crazy... though the bottoms would rot off because I didn't have a fertilized substrate (that was a real pain!). It is a cold-water plant, however, and high temperatures tend to give it a bruisin', so I'm thinking that the transparency is due to the high temperature the tank maintained last week. Hopefully, the plants will recover...

My advice is to cut off as much of the transparent material as you can bear, and allow the rest of the plant to recover. Plants that are rotting away tend to act like gangrenous limbs... (lovely image, I know). A clean cut is better than hoping that the dying material will recover.

[Todd2]

I was looking at the the profile of anacharis and it said that the max temperature to put it in was 82 F so 85 was probably bad for it like you said. Basically all the leaves are transparent so should I pull off all of the leaves? Thanks for your help.

[TankGirl]

Don't pull off all of the leaves if they are all transparent. Leave it be for a bit and see if it springs back. You may still have some trouble with it at that wattage, and if it comes back what will probably happen is the stalk will be smaller in diameter and the leaf nodes stretched out. That's how it grows in my low light tank.

[madasafish]

I agree. If all of the leaves are transparent, give it a chance. Mind you, I find that transparent leaves are moribund leaves...