Java moss dying?? 0.0

[Mollyelzie]

Well I decided to finally introduce a live plant into my tank about a few weeks ago. Java moss is supposed to be quite easy to take care of. I attached it to a piece of drift wood with hair bands (not too tight just enough so it didn’t fall off the wood).

Anyways……my Java moss is just clearly dying. It’s more brown than it is green and it hasn’t grown at all. I attached a photo (my water is yellow because of tannins from my wood). Any advice what I’m doing wrong?

I use the tropica premium nutrition and I have lights that I dimmed down a lot as they were very bright and didn’t wanna stress my cories.

I do have a heater. I keep the water not too warm. Advice please!!!!! Also is my Java moss completely dead or can it be revived? The picture doesn’t really give it justice for how brown it is.

I also added salvinia that looks like it’s doing fine for the moment, only added it like 5 days ago tho so can’t confirm 100% just yet. I have quite a fast flow that I had to slow down a bit

 

[Mollyelzie]

Also can anyone recommend chemicals I can buy to improve my plants health? Been looking at loads on Amazon but not sure what’s a waste of money or what will actually work. I can’t afford a co2 tank and it seems a bit complicated for the little knowledge I have about aquarium plants anyways

 

[Caliban07]

Also can anyone recommend chemicals I can buy to improve my plants health? Been looking at loads on Amazon but not sure what’s a waste of money or what will actually work. I can’t afford a co2 tank and it seems a bit complicated for the little knowledge I have about aquarium plants anyways

Are you in the UK or USA?

 

[Mollyelzie]

I am from the uk

 

[Caliban07]

I am from the uk

Ok TNC complete is an all in one fertiliser that should give the moss some minerals. You can get it online and follow the dosing instructions.

Get some activated carbon for your filter. You can buy fine mesh bags from most decent aquarium stores to put the the carbon in and you can get a bag of carbon for next to nothing online. Perhaps even the mesh bags online too. The carbon will get rid of the staining from the wood.

Alternatively, water changes will do the same thing though you will need to do them more frequently until the wood stops releasing tannins.

Water changes would be a good call anyway. I don’t know how much light tannins absorb but I’d be tempted to keep the tank clear if we are trying to grow moss even if they are ‘low light’ species and water changes should help remove debris and ‘mulm’ that gets trapped in moss if you can vacuum any of it out. When you do a water change take the moss of and shake it in the bucket where you are removing water too. This should get most of the debris out and break off any dying bits of moss.

Do you know if you live in a hard or soft water area? The picture below should help you to Identify this.

 

[Mollyelzie]

Sorry for the late response. I live in essex and according to the map I have hard-very hard water

I ended up chucking away the Java moss, it had gone completely brown and one of my fish had fin rot and I was scared that the decaying plant was ruining the quality of my water.


Ever since I’ve removed it and medicated my fish everyone is healthy again. But I still want to attempt to keep live plants, so I’ll still take any advice I can get.


I’ve been looking at a planting substrate on Amazon, I have gravel so I couldn’t plant anything into it (I think, I’ve just seen some people say roots can’t grow in gravel or something. Makes sense).
Also it would propably be more kind on my cories, not sure if you can use planting substrate ontop of gravel to have a deeper substrate.


Ive been watching father fish and he said to key to a healthy aquarium is deep substrate. But I’m a noob at this so not sure what you can layer…..as I know it’s supposed to go under the gravel probably hahaha.




And about the tannins I actually don’t mind them, weirdly enough the fish seem to love the water since it’s been brown. I boiled my wood a week before putting it in but it still went brown anyway, I do water changes about once a week and it’s been getting less brown each week

 

[Mollyelzie]

Btw I forgot to add, I have two filters in my tank and a air stone and there is quite a lot of movement in my tank. Not sure if that could effect the quality, online someone said over filtering can kill your plants ): but then I know that having the two filters helps me keep my tank super clean. So I’m not sure.