About Java Fern.

[MaloK]

What do you all do, with all those babies ???

 

[Magnum Man]

I have a bunch of it... I leave it as a "tangle" in the original tanks & when one breaks free ( I have a lot of flow in the tanks that have Java Fern in them ) I pluck them off the filter intakes, & I keep a roll of lead free solid core solder in my tank work area, I just cut off an inch & wrap it around the little runner, between leaf shoots... just bending a "U" shape, with my fingers, & slide it over the runner & pinch it closed with my fingers & drop them into another tank that has a space for it... ( my Bichir / Silver Doller tank didn't have any foliage in it, & the Silver Dollars are known grazers ) but they seem to for the most part leave them alone, so I have many Java Fern starts in that tank... I pluck about 1 per week off my filter intakes... just dropping them in, drifting down, seems to give them all the "planting" they need...

 

[MaloK]

Love the core solder idea... I already have a couple rooting in the filter intake. I'm going to try this.

They are the lonely ones who started thriving immediately after I planted.

My Anubias and Downoi are not doing so well. But, Like they say "Bad isn't good, until worse happens."

 

[Magnum Man]

just make sure you are using "solid" core, often solder has acid in the core or rosin in the core as a flux for soldering, I would think either of those would be really bad for the fish

 

[MaloK]

just make sure you are using "solid" core, often solder has acid in the core or rosin in the core as a flux for soldering, I would thing either of those would be really bad for the fish

After reading a little on the product, they seems to contain tin-copper and zink. I think I'm going to try to use CA to glue them to a couple of current substrate pebbles and drop them where I want some to grow.

 

[Archerfish]

What do you all do, with all those babies ???

I donate them to local schools that have aquariums.

 

[Magnum Man]

I would guess any metal leaching into the water is really a non issue… likely the same metals are in “made for aquarium” plant weights… I’ve been doing this for about a year, and the 1st tank I did it to, is full of Armano shrimp, that are thriving… plus any leaching is regularly diluted with normal water changes