Do plants need to be acclimated?

[bud29]

Say I ordered some plants online, would I have to acclimate them like I would fish or do I just put 'em in?

 

[relisefishies8897]

No need to acclimate.

 

[jondamon]

You may want to check for snail eggs.

I bought 2 Anubias from my LFS and gave them a bleach dip followed by dipping in treated water before placing them into my tank and I still got pond snails for my troubles. Lol.


Jon

 

[Rivercats]

That is the million dollar question. Some say yes, some no, some dip to clean the plant of unwanted hitch hikers. I rinse them then put them all in a flat glass pan to soak in aquarium water and to start helping them to recover from shipping. I start planting right away but have the ones not getting planting in the pan of tank water. Shipping is a different beast than getting them at you LFS. I had to ship all my plants in due to the tank size and the almost non exsistant selection available in town. I would encourage biting the bullet and pay for overnight shipping. It is worth the extra cost especially if it's hot or cold. Stem plants take the worst beating during shipping but with overnight shipping even the majority or them do just fine. Also trim about a 1/4 inch or so off each stem before planting stem/bunch plants. They do much better with a clean fresh cut on the stem. And plant them on stem per hole unless you find during research that they grow best with 2 or 3 stems planted together. It is different for each species. Once stem plants are cut to ship the cut tips will slowly start deterioating until planted. That is why you trim the bottoms off. If you get any in pots, remove pot, remove as much padding as possible, then plant. If they have roots coming out the pot bottom, trim the roots even with the pot bottom before removing from the pot. If a plant has mega long root systems it also helps to trim them up. Any other question about plant shipping let me know.

 

[bud29]

Thanks for the help

 

[aqua_chem]

Kind of. Most of the time plants won't need any prep on your part beyond a disinfecting dip (I like H2O2).


That being said, many of the plants you buy are actually grown emersed (out of water but moist and with water up to substrate level). This means that they will need to adapt to submerged form, so don't be surprised if the balk at first.

EDIT: The adaptation will occur naturally and needs no effort on your part.

 

[bud29]

Thanks