"Hard to grow" plants

[dSerk]

When reading about specific species, most authors describe plants as easy or hard to grow. What exactly do they mean? The way I see it, you're tank's parameters either work for that plant or they don't. Sure, there's a continuum of wellness... something might live but not grow and something else might die slowly while something else might die overnight. So, why describe something as "difficult" to grow?

I think my java fern doesn't like its environment. It continues to fight with algae, its color is not great, kinda yellowing, and it's always putting out baby plants on it's leaftips... like all over. I had read this was a sign of stress. I'm about to give up on it. I never heard anyone describe it as "hard to grow" just slow.

The replacements I'm looking at are Myriophyllums, rotalas, and cabombas. Particularly any of the red varieties. The red rotalas and cabombas seem to be particularly "difficult." I guess this just means my water params need to be just right for them. My water is somewhat hard (I think most of the club's members have similar water), the spot where I want to put them gets plenty of light and I fertilize and add CO2 (DIY). Water stays about 78-82F.

Will I have trouble with any of these "difficult" plants? Need more information?

[ingg]

Difficult plants typically require a tighter regime of fetilizers, more lighting requirement, more stable environments, higher CO2 levels, more specific temperature ranges... any or all of those.

It can vary widely even within a species.

Take Ludwigias.

Ludwigia Repens is extremely easy to grow. It will accept a wide variety of lighting levels, and adapt to it. It does not require fertilization when grown under lower (moderate) lighting levels. It will readily accept being chopped to heck and back and simply shoot new sprouts.

Ludwigia 'Cuba' require higher lighting levels to live. It requires elevated levels of CO2, and it requires fertilization to live. It will adapt to varying conditions, but not as easily as Repens, and it requires more of a 'baseline' of care than Repens.

Ludwigia 'Panatanal' is even more difficult to keep. It is a very touchy plant. Vary water/fertilization parameters within the tank, and it can quite quickly and easily respond by stunting and dying on you. It will melt if given insufficient lighting/Co2 levels.

I can grow bushels of Repens. I have always been able to. I can grow it in low light, high light, fertilized, not, CO2 injected, not... any conditions.

I am now getting to the level that I can grow out 'Cuba' pretty well. My equipment and lighting levels are more advanced than when I started; and I've learned a lot in terms of substrates, fertilizers, CO2 levels and such to be able to give this an environment it can live in.

I've tried Pantanal twice. The first time, I melted it within days. The second time, I got it to live, continually stunting itself, for about 45 days bevfore it withered away. It is a more difficult plant, and I' not quite there yet.



The red rotalas are not particularly difficult in my experience - colorata is not much harder to keep than rotundifloria for instance. It is harder to get it to color up, in terms of needing to regulate nitrates and light levels, but not harder to keep alive...


In the end, my best advice is to experiment!

A lot of unusual plants show up at the GWAPA auctions, of every kind of difficulty. Some that are said to be hard grow great for some, and not for others... and the same on some easy plants.

[ddavila06]

i am no expert when it comes to plants since im still learning a lot all the time, but like Dave describes it, ludwigia rapens i very easy to grow. i also have hygrophilia polysperma (or spells something like that), running with no CO2 low light but a rich substrate and doing great. i also grow some crypt like wendtii and something else thats pretty large and they are doing very well. anubia are slower grower but do very well in just about any setting and condition. hope that helps

[kerokero]

I hate the desciptions "easy" or "hard"... they don't really tell you much. My experience with plants (more terrestrial, but under water or above it, there are similar issues) is that easy plants take the widest range of parameters in which they will survive (not thrive - just survive) and/or survive in conditions typical of non-specialist tanks (average joe tanks - low light, no/little ferts, etc). The more narrow the parameters, and/or less typical the parameters then the "harder" the plant would be.

I'd recomend either figuring out your tank more completely (it's not just that you fert, but how, with what, and how it's delivered to your plants, not just light, but more exactly how much, etc) and finding plants to suite, or possibly picking a few "must have" plants, and plan to redo the tank appropriately. "Somewhat" and "plenty of" are subjective, get hard numbers!

I know that most of the plants I like are perfectly happy with mineralized soil but that might not work with some other plants (stem plants that need certain ferts in the water column? Did I remember that correctly?) so you'll need to think about stuff like that too.

Ideally you'd plan a tank out to find plants that *thrive* in the conditions of your tank - ideally but rarely happens Java fern survives in a broad range of conditions (in and out of water) but that doesn't mean it thrives in those conditions, sort of like how you may be experiencing. Note on yours - does it get a lot of light? It might be getting too much if you're trying to grow high light plants with them unless they are shaded?

[dSerk]

Ingg, L. repens was a good example. I've had great success with that one. In fact, I wish I hadn't replanted so many of the trimmings

Kero, I don't take enough metrics on the tank. At least, not any more since it's been pretty stable. The Java Fern is in a well-lit spot in the tank. I think it would be better with another high-light plant in that spot.

I had been reading a lot of threads where someone has success under one set of parameters but someone else has less success or failure with (apparently) the same parameters. No one really brought up genetics in those discussions. Obviously, one individual (or line of clones) could just be more healthy, I guess. So, I gotta experiment.

But learning at the Speed of Plants is frustrating! I've started to keep a consistent daily regimen of ferts and everything looks good (java fern still looks poor). I try to keep a journal and new photographs every couple days. I've heard 2 weeks is a minimum time to change anything and get reliable results. That is, if I think I have a deficiency of Iron, I would want to use a increased dose for about 2 weeks before observing any change. Sound good? I suppose once one gets a better "feel" of the day-to-day changes in the tank, you might be able to reliably observe results sooner....?

So, this weekend, if I can find something bushy and reddish, I might try something new.

[kerokero]

The faster the plant grows, the sooner it will be noticable if your changes were for the better or worse. I don't know how long it will take to see if the fern gets better... the only problems I've ever had with java ferns have been light, so getting some shade might be good? They are just so slooooow to show change.

The thing I've noticed with many threads about success with plants is they are rarely as totally detailed as I would like... but I'm also very much about the details. So the plant gets fert, and CO2, with decent water flow. What is the fert formula? How is it dosed? What is the rate of CO2? The harder the plant, the more specific you need to be, and you need every little facter. You could have the same ferts, CO2, lighting, and water flow, but a difference in substrate or placement in the tank can create significant enough difference to some plants. I know I've bugged the living snot out of some people for specifics on where their plant is located and what conditions it's in specifically for terrariums, but often the devil is in the details and it's similar with aquatics I'm sure.

[dSerk]

The faster the plant grows, the sooner it will be noticable if your changes were for the better or worse.

Makes sense.

The thing I've noticed with many threads about success with plants is they are rarely as totally detailed as I would like... but I'm also very much about the details. So the plant gets fert, and CO2, with decent water flow. What is the fert formula? How is it dosed? What is the rate of CO2? The harder the plant, the more specific you need to be, and you need every little facter.

Most people just want a good looking tank and don't want to get heavy into metrics. I like to know the details, exactly what is going on, but at the same time, precise metrics aren't always going to make the problems obvious. There's too much going on and it's all going on inside a not-very-clinical environment. My goal is to develop a "soft" or "fuzzy" idea about what's going on in my tank. I just want to get to the level where I can see a problem and know how to tweak my parameters... if I have problem X, then do a Little Less This or a Little More That.

I guess I'll just have to try a few things and have some patience. I'll take the dive with some myriophyllum or cabomba or rotala (maybe all three). But first, I just need some place to put my java ferns. There's enough new plants growing off them for someone to cover a big driftwood in java fern.

And I'd feel bad about giving them to someone because of the algae growing on 'em. I think it's cladophlora.

[kerokero]

Algae, the bane of slow growing plants

Sounds like most people should stick with the so called "easy" plants I wish there was a nice database online where you could put in your tank parameters (temp, pH, light level, etc., etc.) and have it spit back a list of what varieties would thrive in those conditions. Is there anything like this online? I keep hearing about plant sites, but when the profiles are static they aren't easily searchable (short of going thru every... single... profile...) it seems like you're missing out on a great resource. Or is there some website I've completely missed?

So you're trying to determine what is baseline in your tank so when you see problems you can tell if they might be related to swings in something?

You could always trim off the leaf tips to keep the java from producing the plantlets for a while. I have some other plants that develop plantlets in stress, and after trying to fix the problem I generally cut off the planlets to try and get the plant to focus on it's own growth (especially blooming, but with such a slow grower babies must be hard on it), rather than that of babies. I'm guessing it would be similar for the ferns.

[krisw]

The best aquatic plant database, hands down, is the PlantFinder on APC, which is maintained by our own Cavan:

http://aquaticplantcentral.com/forumapc/plantfinder

And yes, it does have a search by "Lighting Requirements" and a more general "Hardiness" category (Easy to Difficult), exactly as you wish.

[kerokero]

Ahhhh but not *totally* as I wish... I was thinking about more specific requirements like if I had a certain pH and what not. "Easy" and "hard" don't tell you that much when you're trying to find plants for a specific tank What makes the plant difficult? Maybe it doesn't like it above pH 6.5 but that search won't give you plants based on stuff like that Hah - or I'm just being picky. Been working on another site that gets into stuff like that (searching by origin, niche specific conditions, etc) for frogs so it seems only right to use a dynamic search for plants too!