Why Aquarium Plants Melt, Die & How to Easily Prevent & Stop Submerged Plants from Melting.

hey guys it's alexander williamson and welcome to the secret history living in your aquariums so today we're going to be talking about plant melt what is plant melt and how do we stop it if it's occurring and how do we prevent it if it hasn't occurred yet but we're setting up a new tank and we need to transfer plants so we're going to answer all that i've got examples right over here and i've got tips and tricks which you probably have no idea or even a factor and hopefully we can save the plants you've got if you've got an issue or we can save you some money from the plants you bought and some headache in the time and effort you put into your tank so we're going to go over how to prevent it and how to stop it if it's already going on so let's jump right in right now okay so the first big question here is what is melt what is plant melt well if we look here on a new aquascape you can kind of see what i'm talking about this plant does not look so happy now does it now this is crypt pink flamingo here and the pink has all gone out it just looks dingy and sore its leaves are wilted and and limp it just it doesn't look happy you can tell right same with this uh this uh keralensis here uh this is a laganundra keralensis and it is its leaves are getting thin um and there's holes in it and it doesn't seem to be taking hold so what's going on we thought we did everything right right well something you must know first of all is that almost all plants in our hobby are actually grown on land i know a lot of you know this but just a refresher nurseries grow plants one of two ways generally in our hobby and that's in a tray where their roots are wet and they're getting lots of nutrients in their sub in their substrate but their foliage up top is completely in the air so it gets all the oxygen and all the co2 that it wants and then it gets all the fertilizer it wants from its base and carbon so carbon is 50 of your plant and at 50 percent it's actually getting that mostly from co2 whether it's fixed in the ground and attaching to roots or whether it is in co2 in your water column and either getting into the roots over time that way or being absorbed right through the water column so you'll see that they keep plants in this rock wool which usually has a fertilizer in it and then they band it together and they grow it the reason they do this is because plants grow much better out of water than in water and the other way you're going to see plants grown sometimes is in tissue culture cups and you'll see that there's a jelly in the cup which is nutrients and protein and all the essentials that plants need to grow except for the co2 and the oxygen so basically that stuff is in the atmosphere of the cup but these are not quite new plants from seed they're actually clones so they're adult plants they're ready for their full nutrients but they're growing from cells that we're at a spot where the plant would have kept growing you can read more about that online or you can check out my videos on tissue cultures and what they are and how they're made but going back to the plants and our problem plants out of water grow much faster they get much more intense light be that from our lights or the sun and they transpire so at night they put out co2 that's excess and in the day they put out oxygen which is nice for us right it oxidized it oxygenated the world for us but in the water they have a much harder time doing that respiration and transpiration they have a much harder time doing because they're underwater obviously there's not just free circling co2 all around for them so when we move something whether it's in this in between form kind of like this is almost like half under water half above water because of its odd cloning status and these are a great thing to use if you're doing a new aquascape because they're kind of halfway to where they need to be but if you're using something like this it's been above water its whole life everything but its roots have been above water so when you then transfer it into something like a tank all of a sudden it reaches this stage and you have some serious problems same with this sword fern here problems same with this ludwigia here problems now these aren't actually part of the scape but i put them in here to just kind of show you the signs of melt now these signs if the tank were good in all other situations could be nutrient or mineral deficiencies but knowing that they're in a newer tank that's being set up and they were brought in from uh terrestrial growth or immersed growth where just the roots are under the water we know that that's the case and that's what's going on here too so what can we do once this is already happening that's kind of probably your question if you're on the internet searching and you're thinking oh man this is not good well the first thing we want to do you want to do uh some trimming some serious trimming get rid of anything that's dying and dead this tissue is dna that is trying to turn back into a useful part of the plant right now the plant has realized i'm under water and this is not useful to me it's not absorbing the co2 well in its current state because you know the plants above water they're leathery they they don't have water around them all the time they actually have oils and glands and other things that keep things out from them they need protection and they need sunblock just like we do so because those things damage cells and so does oxygen if it just got in freely so it's all very controlled but under water it doesn't have that so under water it starts to fall apart and the plant redirects all these cells that normally would be going out to the plant and going into new growth and it puts them back into stem growth root growth or rhizome growth and that is you know rhizomes are what you know anubias bucephalandra and java ferns things like that what they use they're they're kind of like roots but they secure a plant and they kind of hold it there and then you've got the other plants like crips that have true roots and they're trying to make their roots do the work because their leaves aren't doing anything on land they were just getting co2 now underwater one there's not enough co2 and so one way we can fix that is by adding some co2 so first we want to trim the dead leaves trim it off wherever it's dying see that this is dying you can probably just get rid of the whole leaf get rid of the whole leaf so the plant doesn't have to nurse that dying leaf and it can redirect its resources i know it'll look like you just have a little stick of a plant left but usually it ends up far better secondly you want to look at the leaves and if it's a new tank and you're just setting it up there's a good chance that you've got dust from the substrate see that on the leaves there you want to clean that off so i've been cleaning it off this plant here same with any algae any diatom algae or any green filamentous algae get that off of there get that off of there so that the plant can breathe so that it can use the leaves that it's going to start growing because it will start sending up new growth either from the center of its growth or the where the roots are like the one back there or it'll start growing it from the crown and this will be the part that is ready so then this part will grow out a few inches and then you can cut it and replant that and it will be ready for underwater life whereas the stem has kind of fallen apart and you can pull that and toss it or cut it right at the base and those roots will have adjusted so really what you want to do clear up all the dead stuff the debris clear up any of that that's in the tank because that's producing ammonia ammonia is a toxin to plants just like it is to fish and other animals however they do need nitrites and nitrates as fertilizer plants do but they disassemble it at a molecular level and then they use the ammonia and they repurpose it into all sorts of different things like dna and energy and just like they do with carbon so what they're doing is they're re-optimizing their dna for this aquatic life once they've decided okay i'm under water and it's stable it's not just a flood for a few weeks they're ready to do that and so the other thing you can do is make sure that they know by stable conditions and water changes that this is their new habitat this is stable if it were a flood zone it would be changing all the time drying high higher getting higher getting lower the the water pressure the nutrients all that so pick a regiment of aquatic uh liquid fertilizers usually get a nice light that's intense enough that it can you know at least double the light that it would have gotten above the water because it needs to go through the water and every six inches it loses half of its strength as it goes into the water and quickly it loses all its colors too and you'll notice in deep tanks you can't even see the reds and some of the other colors it's just down to blues and greens and whites so we can do that we can start running co2 if it's a high-tech tank and then we can have our substrate clean so make sure that you're not deep gravel vacuum but you're just picking up any dead leaves and debris that are making more ammonia and fueling that cycle so that's the prevention bit also water change water change water change you're building up ammonia that's leaching from new substrates if it's a high-tech tank with a active substrate and if it's not you're just building that up from from fish and other things and so what you want to do after you do a water change you can do as much as an 80 water change every three days if there's not fish in there right now and then what you can do is is get a dosage regiment down figure out what each plant needs you know figure out your most needy plants and set it for that you can find this info online it's all over the place lots of good resources online for plants so what happens if you want to just avoid all of this together i mean sometimes we just kind of have a tank going and we get new plants and we just kind of have to piecemeal it together or we steal plants that are already immersed like that's kind of what i've done here is some of these were growing in little bowls and i decided i want it for that tank how can we prevent it well we're going to get to that in just one second before we get to that though i just want to compel you guys if you like my tanks if you like my aquascapes uh please like subscribe leave a comment let me know if you like these videos in this style uh and it really helps out the channel especially when you guys watch something all the way through or share it if it's useful to you or a friend who's uh working through a situation that maybe the video may help so on to prevention now prevention is kind of similar when we're preventing the melting of plants as it is to the upkeep but there's some key differences first of all make sure you're getting your plants from a good source make sure that they're healthy plants to begin with if they're already melting and falling apart that's no good and if they're not immersed at all yet make sure that they look nice and healthy vigorous full of color and life you know we're just going to drop that in there so you can kind of see healthy plant happy plant right uh you wouldn't want to go and get a plant say like this where everything is just limp and translucent and bug eaten looking that plant has problems it has it has some nutrient deficiencies as well so make sure you're getting a good stock of plants and that the plant looks okay that's obviously the biggest thing you can do right off the bat next thing you want to do is have an active substrate that has nutrients in it because as these plants transition their roots will be the thing that becomes the most active at eating now when they first get underwater they keep trying to eat through their leaves so to speak because that's where they get all their carbon and that's where they get their oxygen and they rearrange it and that's 50 of the plant's mass or nutrients is through that carbon through that co2 or that or that co that's just ambient in the atmosphere so under water they're going to do that at first while they're adapting they're going to feed from the water column so that's why it's important to have some sort of regimen whether you want to use individual you know brighty k that's potassium or whether you want to use uh an all-in-one whatever it may be do your research and figure out what is the best option for you now the other thing we can do is we can stabilize our tank so even if you're not doing high tech with the co2 all this stuff still applies all the way up to the co2 part but get a good light and have that on maybe started at eight hours a day eight hours a day is usually a good spot for aquatic plants if it's a nice strong light you're going to need it brighter than that plant would have wanted above water generally and so if you got a good light a fluval 3.0 or a twinstar or a kessel or even some good shop lights just uh with strong leds floodlights that's a great start and the deeper the plant is the more light you're gonna need so make sure that your plant's got plenty of light the other thing you're going to want to do is clean up any algae that's already in the tank treat that get that under control uh if if this isn't a brand new tank uh i've got plenty of videos on that so you can check those out as well now the other thing you're going to want to do is clean up any detritus as we said and you're going to want to plant the plants apart from one another you don't want them in the shade of one another about as close as these plants are that's about as close as you'd want to get them you want each plant to be able to get lots of sun or or you know light you want them to get a full spectrum of that light and you also want their roots to be able to transition and start feeding whenever they're ready and the leaves to be able to have the nutrients in the water when it's ready and also the gas whether you're using co2 that's there or co2 from fish in an established tank or just co2 that's coming in because it's being sucked into the tank and as it breaks the surface of the water you get these micro bubbles and they diffuse into the the tank and off gassing occurs and things leave the tank that way too so when the plants in the day put out little bubbles of oxygen it leaves your tank slowly well the more you agitate the surface the more this can happen and the quicker the plants can come and go and get rid of toxins oxygen is a very toxic compound to cells it is an oxidator you know antioxidants if you know of those in foods well they can be very damaging to cells oxygen can and it can free radicals can then come in and bond with things and break things so they literally break down the cell between that and also the ammonia that builds up in the plant because it can't deal with its own vascular system so it needs to grow its new vascular system and transport those toxins away or have them trimmed so as you see this happening if it does occur cut it it it can be trimmed trim it and cut it away and cut it down near the the base and try to keep the roots uh buried not super deep but keep them secure and buried and in a substrate that has some nutrients so it can still feed and it should be growing new roots and as well as new leafs from a rosette or from the center of the top of the plant so this should be occurring while you're trimming back the other things you'll start seeing your plants adapting and the flow of the water like i said will keep all that moving it'll keep everything all the waste moving and trap the waste in the filter and it will cut down on the amount of uh harmful waste so even though plants love ammonia and they need it on an atomic level they don't want it just overdosed onto them so they want it out of the water too they want nitrates and nitrites ideally and then they can rearrange it how they need it so the other thing is don't move your plants if it looks like they're don't they're not doing well don't move them just carefully trim them get rid of any of the dust or debris that's settled on them you can add shrimp if the the parameters in the tank are safe for shrimp and you can have them cleaning or gentle snails that don't eat the plants and actually a lot of snails will only eat the dead tissue on the plants they're not going to actually eat the plants so check out other videos on snails they're in my other videos as well to figure out what snails those are it's most of the ones that are common in our hobby honestly and the other thing you can do is you can make sure that there is ammonia in the tank at some level now i know i just told you that ammonia is dangerous for plants and fish but it needs to it needs to have the nitrate and nitrites and what it'll do is it'll fix that in its roots and it'll fix it with oxygen and it will then be able to metabolize using that and phosphates or phosphorus and it will control how much carbon it can use so if you see this melt going on generally you want to turn up the carbon if you have that luxury so you can turn up the co2 and your plants can then they can keep up their energy factory can keep up with that and sometimes the problem is that they're being told to grow because of the light above but they don't have the building blocks they don't have the co2 and so they grow these thin wimpy anemic leaves that don't have enough nutrients so you can either try turning down your light and turning up your co2 now keep in mind if you have critters this can affect them and we're just thinking selfishly about plants right now but that's one more step you can take if your first step was turning up the light and making sure it was intense enough your next step is making sure that it's not so intense that your plants are growing too fast for their own good so if you follow all this and you know you you do the water column dosing you do your water changes to make sure that water is clean you will have a happy and healthy tank and you will have far less of this melting and you'll lose far less money in plants when it does occur because it'll be a few leaves you know here it's occurring but we still have a new leaf growth you can see where i cut off the end there we have two leaves that are still doing pretty solid another one that i'll probably cut in half now it's a long argument whether cut it in half or cut the whole thing and i don't know the answer to just be honest with you i don't know the answer but there's different schools of thought and i'll let you decide on that but by following those pretty easy to follow guidelines that we've gone over twice now i hope you guys can avoid the heartbreak of melting your favorite plants avoid the ammonia spike that then causes algae that then blocks out the the light to your uh your plants from being able to photosynthesize and it also spikes other things while dropping your oxygen or sometimes it can raise your oxygen and drop your carbon so hopefully we prevent all these feedback loops and that is the trick to mastering the melting aquatic plant now plants can also have to transfer out the same way and oftentimes they'll die coming out onto land however that root structure being placed is is the key and the other key is they're going to breach the water on their own so if plants are coming out of the water on their own they've done it slowly they have two three four five months to do that process whereas these other ones are being slammed into an all of the sudden process so part of it's just the way we're doing it is unfortunate for the plants it's the worst of the two situations possible but hopefully this helps i'll talk to you guys next time and check out my other videos for lots of tips on growing plants cycling tanks aquascape layouts and all sorts of other stuff thanks for watching take care and i'll talk to you later bye

Channel: The Secret History Living in Your Aquarium

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Keywords: why are my plants melting, aquarium plants, aquascaping, how to stop melt, melting plants, yellow plant leaves, clear leaves, why do aquarium plants melt, how to prevent melting plants, crypt melt, substrate, bucephalandra, sword plant, plants rotting, fish tank, fish keeping, the secret history living in your aquarium, coop, plants are falling apart, see through leaves in my aquarium, aquarium plant leaves dissolving, leaves melting

Id: 1YV5ltAs9Aw

Length: 22min 2sec (1322 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 20 2020