Low tech tall plants to hide equipment?

[mudraker]

[/QUOTE]Also hornwort, java moss, ricca, elodea ... Actually, any plant without stomata will be Excel (and bleach) sensitive. Sometimes you can dose 1/2 & get away with it ... sometimes not.

I'll take your word over mine, but my Java Moss was always slow growing in lowlight tanks. After dosing the recommended levels of Excel in various tanks, the stuff started growing like crazy without any meltdown whatsoever. In fact, I quit dosing Excell some of the tanks because of out-of-control growth of the Java Moss.

Just my experience.

Now I did screw up and dose a tank with marimo balls in it, forgetting it is just a decorative algae. BIG MISTAKE I forgot to mention on Excel's meltdown potential...

 

[fort384]

I have also used excel excessively in tanks with java
Moss and riccia with great results.

 

[jsoong]

I don't have personal experience with java moss or ricca, but meltdown had been reported by others. Excel seems to be a tricky one to use with sensitive plants. I ran up to half the loading dose with hornwort without problems for months, then all of a sudden, big melt down without any dosage change .... i don't know if this is a cumulative overdose thing, or if something had change with the tank's organic content. <Since Excel is an oxidizer, it may be more toxic in water with less organic material ... like with KMnO4, you can put a lot in water with high organics, but same dose in clean water is toxic.>

 

[mudraker]

I don't have personal experience with java moss or ricca, but meltdown had been reported by others.

Personally, I never would have advised Khalix to try Excel if I did not truly believe it will VERY, VERY LIKELY help her java moss grow vigorously and address her problem, which is to hide equipment in her tank using lowlight plants. What she has is Java Moss.

I’m also not trying say I know better than you, because that would be really stupid of me. I am also in great awe of someone with the knowledge, experience and dedication to successfully mix aquatic plants with gold fish.

From what I know of riccia, it becomes sensitive when it is tied to driftwood, anchored in substrate to form a lawn, etc. The same with hornwort when submerged rather than floated. In nature both are floating plants and struggle when fully submerged. Both need very high light and Riccia is almost doomed without regulated Co2.

Many resort to Excel when desperate and their plants are in terrible shape from shock, bad husbandry or both.

I’ve had excellent results with java moss and Excel under too many circumstances to mention, but I can if asked.

That is why forums like this can really help people succeed - or fail. Especially if they don’t do their own homework and just take random advice on internet forums.


Hornwort has shed its needles and fouled so many of my tanks I'm ashamed to admit it.

Hornwort was advised to me to be an ideal plant on numerous occasions and appealed to me because:

1. A "can't lose" lowlight plant. (I later found out it is not lowlight and in the long run doesn't enjoy being anchored. I lost on both methods many times.)
2. One of the few plants goldfish won't eat.
3. A vigorous nitrate eater.

Each time, Hornwort was not only a disappointment but a terrible mess to clean up in the tank and filters after shedding hundreds (seems like thousands) of needles. I gave up on it way before experimenting with Excel. I later found out it is a swamp plant and is really hit or miss in aquariums - especially in lowlight and/or cold water tanks.

This is just my personal experience.

P.S. I was dumb enough to try hornwort again not once but twice last summer. No, Excell in either tank. I call it "My hornwort stupidity” Parts 8 & 9.

<Since Excel is an oxidizer, it may be more toxic in water with less organic material ... like with KMnO4, you can put a lot in water with high organics, but same dose in clean water is toxic.>

This is too sciency for most of us. I would have to do an extensive internest search and call and talk to actual fish biologists and possibly water chemists to understand what it means. Once I understood, it would take hours and hours to figure out how to explain it in plain English how this applies to my tank, let alone to the average person trying to grow java moss in a lowlight aquarium.

This is just my experience and opinion.

 

[jsoong]

Mudraker, I am certainly not disputing your experience with Excel & Java moss at all. When it comes to plants, I am just a newbie trying to learn more.

I am simply reporting that some people have had problems using Excel with it. As I stated, I don't understand why it works for some & not others. <Or in my tank, worked for a while, then disaster ....>

Although I like to understand why something works or not, I am certainly not opposed to going by people's experiences. In other words, no need to worry about the "why's", if it works just go with it.

 

[kc2ped]

So I finally have some time off from work next week(4 days in a row, woo!), and I am really unhappy that I haven't been able to finish scaping my tank. I kind of just threw things in and cycled it(fishlessly) and added my fish. I need more hiding spaces.. whether plants or caves. Will work on at least one more cave for the left side of the tank.. but I feel like I really need something plant-wise to hide the intake valves and airline tubing, at least partially. Problem is I need them to be low light. I have a soil substrate in the back, but my tank is really deep and until tax time I don't have the funds to upgrade my lights or do co2, though it's something I'd like to eventually move up to. However, at least for this tank the fish come first so I don't want to stress too much on plants.

The bubble wall really needs to be hidden, too, and I may actually replace it with one of the flexible black ones so it goes kind of ninja. It's at least lower down, though, so small plants should do the trick.

Any suggestions? Or do I just need to pretend it doesn't look terrible until I get the funds?
Here's the horrible mess it is right now(ps, pardon the cloudiness, was playing with things and kind of kicked the sand up too much, woops.. plus my java moss is kind of strung everywhere randomly at the moment, lol):

One day when i was browsing at my local Petland Discounts I found thin green plastic an airline that has a fake plant molded around it. The plant part is just a little to tall for my BioCUBE 14 so it has some bends in it that make it look a little more realistic. I run it down the back corner of the tank next to the filter return and have an airstone that is my CO2 diffuser attached so that the little bubbles right after a recharge float up into the filter jet and disperse a bit. It is the only artificial plant in the tank and I try to hide it with real plants but anything tall gets shredded by the filter jet.