Maintainence Of My P@h Plants

[crmpicco]

Hi,

I purchased three plants from Pets at Home on Christmas Eve for my 70ltr tank. They are the 3 for £5.50 deal for those familiar with this offer.

My question is: do I need to feed them anything?

I had my previous plants from Aug-Dec, however they were way past their best and really should have been out the tank much sooner than they were. In fact, one of them had only one strand of plant coming out the block at the bottom...not exactly full looking.

I have heard of aquarium fertilizer, however i'm not sure if this is something that I need to buy for these plants. Apologies, I don't know the name of the plants. I can post up some pictures if it helps.

Cheers,
Picco
twitter.com/crmpicco

 

[coldcazzie]

Pictures would be a great help as would some more details about your tank: size, stock and lighting. If we can have that info and identify the plants then we can best advise you on how to care for them. Plants should last a lot longer than 4 months, so we definitely need to address something

 

[hensonc4098]

+1 to the above. Different plants need different things, so if you could get some pictures then we'll be able to help you better

 

[crmpicco]

These are some pictures I have just taken, sorry I don't know the name of them:

So you think even the cheaper, non-potted plants should last longer than 4 months?

My tank is a 70ltr Hagen Tropiquarium 68.

Thanks for your help.

Root tabs have been suggested to me. I presume they are planted underneath the plant and the roots feed from them? Is it worth buying a pack of these? Will these benefit my plants and prolong their life?

twitter.com/crmpicco

 

[crmpicco]

These are some pictures I have just taken, sorry I don't know the name of them:

So you think even the cheaper, non-potted plants should last longer than 4 months?

My tank is a 70ltr Hagen Tropiquarium 68.

Thanks for your help.

Root tabs have been suggested to me. I presume they are planted underneath the plant and the roots feed from them? Is it worth buying a pack of these? Will these benefit my plants and prolong their life?

twitter.com/crmpicco

Update: I went out at lunch today and bought some LoveFish Plant Fertilizer, shown below. It comes in a liquid format so i'll give that a try and see how the plants get on.

If it works out well i'll buy another three and put them all up the back of the tank as has been suggested.

I don't really want to buy more plants only for them to last 3/4 weeks all because I don't have the proper stuff or knowledge to look after them.

I noticed P@H didn't have the API root blocks, in fact the only aquarium plant food they had was the fertilizer. They've got pots and pots of plants, but no food?

I'll report back how I get on with the fertilizer soon

 

[hensonc4098]

Cool Take the plants out of the pot and just plant them in your gravel like you would plant a bulb or something in soil - when they're all squashed up together like that, their roots won't have space to grow and light won't be able to reach the lower leaves, making them die off. The bushy looking one is cabomba and the stringy looking one is vallisneria, not sure about the other. If you google those 2 though, you should be able to see pictures of them planted to see how they should look

Don't worry about any more fertilisers, goldfish poop will be plenty food for the plants - just watch they don't eat your plants. They can sometimes be a bit veggie...

 

[crmpicco]

Cool Take the plants out of the pot and just plant them in your gravel like you would plant a bulb or something in soil - when they're all squashed up together like that, their roots won't have space to grow and light won't be able to reach the lower leaves, making them die off. The bushy looking one is cabomba and the stringy looking one is vallisneria, not sure about the other. If you google those 2 though, you should be able to see pictures of them planted to see how they should look

Don't worry about any more fertilisers, goldfish poop will be plenty food for the plants - just watch they don't eat your plants. They can sometimes be a bit veggie...

Thanks, they don't look like they come out of the base they're in very easily. The roots come out the bottom. The blocks they are in also seem to stabilize them.

I have used the fertilizer once, however after some further reading I have learned that plants in cold water tanks don't tend to last as plants in tropical tanks. This is fine, if this is the norm then I will just have to live with that. I can only raise the temperature so high and I don't want to distress my fish for the sake of the plants.

I will persist with the fertilizer I bought, only weekly though and nothing too intensive. I understand what you're saying, so I won't be stressing out about it. After one treatment I haven't seen much difference really, the parts of the plants that are going brown are still brown and haven't changed. Actually, one of the Vallisneria leaves came off yesterday

My medium to long term plan is to move both the comet and the shub to a pond owned by a family member. Once they have been re-homed I will be converting the tank to tropical, however I don't want to discuss that here - that's for another thread, and not for just now...I won't be doing that for a few months yet.

 

[hensonc4098]

Just pull the pot thing off and take all the spongey wool stuff off and plant it Have a look HERE for a guide with the vallis.