Many years ago when I was ramping up my planted tanks I spent a lot of time on selecting plants to produce specific look I was trying to produce. For most of us the starting point is smaller and younger plants as they are cheaper and we then expect them to growe into the look we have imagined.
The problem is that we seem to forget that plants always grow. They will get taller, and/or wide and some will spread to new spots. So we plant the tanks and then we watch it grow in to approach that beautiful look we had planned for from the outset. ANd one day we look into the tank and it is perfect. The sizes are idea, the color mix is excellent and everyhting is happy. Every tinme we look into the tank we smile.
And thn it happens. The plants keep growing. Roots get longer, leaves break the surface and fish become harder and harder to see. And then we realize we no longer have the lovely scape we worked sohard to profuce. We have a jungle. Somehow along the way we forgot that the plants do not stop growing on demand.
Sooner or later we have no joice, we need to do somerhing ti make turn the jungle back into the loverly garden it waonce was and should always be. So we jack and prune, uproot and move etc. etc. But during this whole process we have had to deal with two facts. More plant mass in a ttank usually means we need to adjust our fertilizing.
And then comes the big redo and the plant mass gets reduced substantially. This of course has two imlications. The first is that less plant mass means lless ferts and we need to get thing right again in that respect. But something else is happening as we hack, chop and replant. This has to do with the amount of filtration being done by the plants.
When plant mass changes markedly, so does the chemistry in the water. This includes how the tank will handle cycling chores. Well planted tanks mostly handle the nitrogen components rather than having microorganisms doing so. There are never no nitrifiers at work but the more pants we have the less bacteria we need. So, a big pruning may mean we need to monitor things for a bit to insure we have not allowed for a short term spike.
Then there is the potential for algae. When we prune the plants but the creation of the nitrogen forms doesn't change, the algae may have a great opportunity to take advantage of any imbalances the pruning might have created.
Hopefully, as we keep planted tanks longer we learn along the way. We need to remind ourselves that plants grow and that we have to deal with that. But, in all the time I was ramping up into planted tanks nobody ever warns us that the plants will not stop growing and that, just because the tank has achieved that look we imagined the day we set out to create the look, it can not and will not last for very long.
The more scaped, the more creative the look we create the harder it will be to maintain over time. The worst part of this is, if you are like me, you hate throwing out any thriving plant. So I went from 1 to 2 to 5 to 10 to 13 planted tanks by using my cuttings and prunings etc. I hate throwing away thriving plants.
So welcome to the club folks. Sooner or later we all earn the same lesson, they keep growing and that means we have to deal with that.
I hope you have an underwater weed whacker
I would be glad to help you whip them into shape. Because when you say Java Ferns don't outgrow, your are mistaken. Here is a picture of a single Java Fern in a 29 gal tank. I split the plant in half which is why there are two. The tank is just under 19 inches deep. I sent them to another TFF member about 6-8 weeks ago.
so a good hack when that starts happening helps to "reset" it.
