Plants

[littlelouie]

Just wondering if leaving the rotting leaves in your tank is ok.

My potted crypts are sprouting new leaves and some of the larger ones are rotting away. The fish sometimes have a nibble on them so I have left them in the tank (6gal).

Do the plants feed off the rotting leaves or is the process too slow and actaully creating probs in there?

Louise

 

[Allivymar]

Keep a close eye on your ammonia level; rotting vegetation can spike it.

 

[Spy_90]

i also belive that the plants feed off rotting leaves, it's part of the food cycle.
as long as you are not in a cycle, a few rotting leaves won't cause an ammonia spike in my opinion.

 

[Zic]

I have a dwarf lily pad (apognon, or something similar) that loses it's leaves. I clip them out, just because I think it's ugly when the rotting leaves start floating around the tank. It didn't really hurt anything, though.

 

[Biggen]

If I have a lot of dead leaves (not a normal occurence) I will remove them. Other than that, I leave everything in the tank. Rotting vegetation makes great fertilizer.

 

[littlelouie]

Thanks everyone for the input 8)

My clown loach seems to eat anything and everything and the 2 leaves are now gone! And the clown loach seems to be grinning

Louise

 

[justDIY]

only thing I would add ... depending on your filtration and fishload, the extra ammonia created by the rotting leaves, in addition to a large number of fish may be stretching your biofiltration capacity to it's limits.

I know my 29 gallon is pretty close to it's limits, I run a lot of biomedia in my canister, but with 25 (at last count) fish, some of them largish, I know I'm over the 1" fish per gallon rule ... the plants help absorb some of this excess, almost all the gravel in my tank is covered with one type of plant or another.

 

[littlelouie]

When you say stretch the biofiltration capacity, will weekly w/c keep this in check.
I can test the water 1 or 2 times p/w to keep an eye on the ammonia levels but is this enough
Thanks glmcell

Louise

 

[Allivymar]

My 25 also has a heavy bio-load (55g here we come!). I do 10-20% water changes/gravel vacs 2-3x a week to keep up (I test the water once a week tho), because whatever goes into the tank doesn't come out less I take it out.

Ammonia turns into nitrites then nitrates...so that needs to be removed. Everyone's favorite pasttime besides eating seems to be pooing, so that has to go. I trim off the dead leaves on my swords as well, now that the plec has found them delectable and strips them bare. I figure, IRL they would have freshwater arriving all the time, be it from rain or moving water.

 

[littlelouie]

True Alli, maybe weekend 25% with gravel vac plus a 10% mid week just water no vac will do great for my cardinals and loach

The tank always looks its best about 1hr after a w/c on the weekend and lasts to appx Wednesday when things still look good but not spakling.

Imitating RL is the best solution so the above w/c routine could be the answer.

Thanks
Louise

 

[Allivymar]

Heh, our tanks are prob as artificial as they come, and our fish for the most part totally domesticated (cept for those wild caught guys). I mentioned that bit, cause some folks feel frequent water changes are stressful to the fishies. I happen to think, if the changes are small and frequent, its a good thing. I'm removing waste the way running water might, or the way a good rainfall will dilute things (not that I'm going to go as far as to add runoff tho LOL). The health of my fish seems to bear that thought out. Besides, like I said, the wild fish live in an ever changing/ever refreshing environment and manage to survive *grin*