Save Your Dying Aquarium Plants: Pro Tips
- Aug 20, 2021
- Anshika Mishra
- 635 0 0
Live aquarium plants are fantastic. They are beautiful, they consume your fish's nitrogen waste, but like with fish, they come with a bit of a learning curve if you want to keep them alive. So, let's fish the answer to one of the most frequent beginner questions:
Why Do Plants Keep Dying?
Reason 1: Melting Plants
Sometimes when you buy a new plant, immerse them in the water, and it just starts melting back. This is because most of these plants are grown at plant farms that grow them emersed, which means out of water. The plant farms do this because, this way, the leaves grow much more significant, much faster, and can absorb carbon dioxide directly from the air. Also, this depletes the risk of fish disease, pests, and algae.
When you take that plant and put it in your aquarium, all the immerse grown leaves should melt back, and then within a few weeks, you will start seeing new shoots as submersed grown start to pop up, and those are leaves that are used to getting light and carbon dioxide while entirely underwater.
Generally, submerse grown leaves will be smaller, thinner, and more delicate than their immersed grown counterparts. This is why you often buy a big plant, but in the water, it shrinks.
This can also happen if you have a submersed plant that was used to one set of water parameters, and all of a sudden, they switched to another set of water parameters.
Reason 2: Incorrectly Planted
There are different ways of planting aquarium plants. Many plants like their roots deeply entangled in the substrate, whereas other want it to be entirely out of the substrate. For example, you want to plunge it as deeply as possible into the substrate with stem plants, whereas plants like Java Fern-like stay up.
Reason 3: Not Enough Food
Plant nutrient deficiency could cause severe harm to your plant. Sometimes, a specific nutrient deficiency could result in a plant's death. However, in the case of macronutrients or nutrients that are an a-must for plants like Nitrogen, Potassium, Phosphorous, the general signs are leaves turning yellow. Further, down the line, the leave will turn brown, thinner, giant gaping holes, and eventually enough so that the leaf may rip of or entirely disintegrate. In the case of a massive number of leaf disintegration, the pet plants could potentially die. You can combat that by feeding your plants. However, for the heavy root plants, you want to make sure they have a nutrient-rich substrate.
Random Reasons
Specific random reasons might lead to the death of your plant. For example, you ordered your plant in the winter, and the package got too cold. Upon opening, the plant will look perfectly fine, you put it in your tank, and then all the leaves will fall off with no sprout formation. Another thing is the bulb plants. Again, just a certain percentage of bulbs end up being duds.
Let us know your experience and rookie mistakes with aquarium plants in the comment below.
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