Java Fern short leaves

[Beastije]

Hi, so I bought a java fern for the first time in august. It was bundle with leaves around 15 cm long, several shorter ones. I separated it into two, put each into separate tank, tied it to a rock
One tank had 29°C the other 25°C
Looking at the pictures, I can see the plant really grew
from

to

and from

to

Recently even more number of the long leaves turned brown and got loose, and the rest of the plant is just bunch of small leaves that do not seem to grow in height
Is this normal behavior, that the long leaves from the plant switch to a bush of very short leaves?


I never had this plant so not sure if it is lacking something or if this is how it is supposed to grow. Most of my plants dont do well overall, except anubias that I have had for 10 years and is now 6 plants, every other plant sort of does well until it doesnt and I would have for this to be the same scenario.
Thanks

 

[Rocky998]

Hi, so I bought a java fern for the first time in august. It was bundle with leaves around 15 cm long, several shorter ones. I separated it into two, put each into separate tank, tied it to a rock
One tank had 29°C the other 25°C
Looking at the pictures, I can see the plant really grew
from View attachment 155557 to View attachment 155554 and from View attachment 155556 to View attachment 155555

Recently even more number of the long leaves turned brown and got loose, and the rest of the plant is just bunch of small leaves that do not seem to grow in height
Is this normal behavior, that the long leaves from the plant switch to a bush of very short leaves?


I never had this plant so not sure if it is lacking something or if this is how it is supposed to grow. Most of my plants dont do well overall, except anubias that I have had for 10 years and is now 6 plants, every other plant sort of does well until it doesnt and I would have for this to be the same scenario.
Thanks

Hi! I have java ferns and when they got new leaves, they were and still are small-mid sized leaves... These plants are slow growers... They make a ton of baby ferns but you dont see real growth for a while... My new leaves have grown a but but nothing major... Its been about 2 months since they appeared and they have maybe grown an inch?... Hard to tell... Hope this info helps!

 

[StevenF]

Recently even more number of the long leaves turned brown and got loose, and the rest of the plant is just bunch of small leaves that do not seem to grow in height

Most of my plants dont do well overall, except anubias that I have had for 10 years and is now 6 plants, every other plant sort of does well until it doesnt and I would have for this to be the same scenario.

I sounds like your plants are struggling to get enough nutrients to grow have you ever used a fertilizer? When plants don't do well or don't grow often it is the result a nutrient deficiency (nitrogen, potassium, phosphate, calcium magnesium, sulfur,iron, zinc, and others). When one nutrient runs out plant growth slows and can stop and then the plant may die. Anubias is very tolerant to low nutrient levels. Which is why it is doing well in your tank. but the others are lesstolerant.

 

[Beastije]

I always assumed it is nutrients too, but sort of hoped they would pick up from what the leftover food and all. I cant really use any fertilizer, I had frogs, have corries, I have snails I want to keep alive, I have shrimp,.... How do you guys fertilize with sensitive creatures? are you risking it and trusting the manufacturer to not put in poisonous compounds?

 

[Essjay]

I have shrimps and snails and I use fertiliser with no problems. I use Seachem Flourish Comprehensive Supplement at half the stated dose.

 

[StevenF]

Fertilizers and there ingredients has been in use for over100 years. And aquarium owners have been using fertilizer for at least 50years. Sometimes they buy an aquarium specific fertilizer or use a fertilizer intended for use on farms. In general most fertilizer are safe as long as they don't have ammonia based ingredients such as ammonia nitrate, ammonia sulfate. I have not seen anything to indicate any of the ingredients used in aquarium fertilizer are toxic IF DOSE AT APPROPRAITE LEVELS. If you dose too much of anything in an aquarium,, including fish food, you can kill your fish. If you fallow the mnufactuures recommended dose you should be OK.

Note if you don't see the plants improving with the fertilizer don't just increase the dose. People have done this with fertilizers. I saw a post of a person dosing enough of a fertilizer to increase the iron content in the water to over 2ppm. While this did provide good plant growth it did push the iron concentration to close to the toxic point. The reason he didn't get good plant goth was because his fertilizer was deficient in zinc. So by increasing the need dose by 20 times he did fix the zinc deficiency but created potentially toxic iron levels.

Also some fertilizers are dependent on your water providing some of the nutrients plants need. I used Flourish Comprehensive and I didn't get good results from it because I am using filtered water with almost no nutrients in it. I eventually made my own comprehensive fertilizer to get good results. but Flourish might work for you.YOu could try it. But I would recommend you try GLA Micro EDTA+DTPA it will take care of all of your micronutrients. It would dose the micros to levels that i have found work in my filtered water. As to the macro nutrients your fish and your water may have enough Nitrogen, potassium, Calcium, Magnesium, and sulfur your plants need. If not the GLA web site also has instructions for dosing the macros.

 

[Essjay]

But I would recommend you try GLA Micro EDTA+DTPA

Unfortunately they only ship within the US