My sunken forest tank without anacharis.

Retired Viking · Jul 16, 2020

My tetra sunken forest tank had a nice anacharis arch and forest :wub:

that I made with long anacharis plants. I have been softening my tank water with RO and unfortunately my anacharis began to melt. It was over 3 feet long at one time

. I have now removed what little was left. I added more ferns and to replace the anacharis I added some salvinia. Here is a picture of before and after. I have not been able to order any more anacharis or salvinia from my LFS. I have some more salvinia on back order that I hope to add to this tank when and if it comes in.

PheonixKingZ · Jul 17, 2020

Looks good!

Does your tank not have a light? Or is it just the flash on your camera?

FishGuest5123 · Jul 17, 2020

Anacharis can melt. You can still order it on EBay.

Barry Tetra · Jul 17, 2020

Deanasue said:
Anacharis can melt. You can still order it on EBay.

How can they melt???

PheonixKingZ · Jul 17, 2020

Barry Tetra said:
How can they melt???

If the plant is raised in a cold-water environment, and then is introduced to a tank with hot/warm water, it will melt. I had this issue when introducing Anacharis to my 20g long tank. I got it sitting in a bucket of cold water. Once I added it to the tank, it melted. I kept it in there just to see what would happen. It stayed "melted" for about a week and is just now staring to shoot out new roots.

Retired Viking · Jul 17, 2020

PheonixKingZ said:
Looks good!

Does your tank not have a light? Or is it just the flash on your camera?

It has t-8 plant lights so it is not as bright and it also maybe the flash from my camera, since I have tetras in the tank I keep the lights a little lower.

Retired Viking · Jul 17, 2020

PheonixKingZ said:
If the plant is raised in a cold-water environment, and then is introduced to a tank with hot/warm water, it will melt. I had this issue when introducing Anacharis to my 20g long tank. I got it sitting in a bucket of cold water. Once I added it to the tank, it melted. I kept it in there just to see what would happen. It stayed "melted" for about a week and is just now staring to shoot out new roots.

It also is raised in harder water than what I now have in my tetra tank. I still have some left in my hard water tanks and it is recovering but nowhere as long or nice as it was.