plant death

[J. Fisher]

My Sagitaria had been growing great covering the bottom of my tank. Once it became rather thick it began quickly dying off from the center outward. The leaves would become transparent and deteriorate away. I removed all of the dead and sickly plants and things seem under control at the moment.

I am wondering what caused this. The Sagitaria was the only plant effected, everything else looks and looked good. Perhaps it choked itself out? Or maybe my gravel bed is becoming exhausted... decaying roots?

The tank is 46g with high light and preasurized co2. [acronym:d80921279c="power head or Measure of the concentration of hydrogen ions, depending on context"]ph[/acronym:d80921279c]:6.8 [acronym:d80921279c="Carbonate Hardness"]KH[/acronym:d80921279c]:3 dosed regularly with nutrients. Heavily planted.

[travis simonson]

Interesting. Did you get a chance to look at the roots of the dying plants? A lot of thick ground cover plants will choke themselves out when the older plants die and the roots rot the rot can spread to the roots of nearby healthy plants. Glosso has done this to me but I've never kept a very thick carpet of Sagittaria before.

[Xzap]

I keep some dwarf sag and it will choke itself out easy. I will usually take a "pot" of it and split it into about 6 pieces.

Dave

[J. Fisher]

I did notice as I was removing the dead and dying plants, the roots looked like the healthiest part. The plants seemed to be dying from the top down. I just threw out the decaying root possibility because I have never experianced this before.

Since I removed the bad plants the remaining seem to be doing good. Whatever the problem, removing the ill plants has stopped the problem.

The dense Sagitaria looks nice, I will try to keep it in check as it grows back not letting it grow over itself too much.

Thanks

[malkore]

yep, with sag, chain sword, and similar runner plants, you typically need to remove one or two plants per week to maintain a nice dense look, without getting so thick they die off.

Stem plants that get very bushy, like ambulia, cabomba, ludwigia...need the same sort of treatment. Otherwise the stem will rot away.