Are my plants dying or are my fish eating them?

[Fishpig]

I bought two bronze wendtii crypts and two undulata crypts. I went out of town for several days and came back with the one undulata missing all its leaves and the rest of the three with about half its leaves remaining. I have a large community tank with many species: odessa barbs, rhombus barbs, panda barbs, clown barb, harlequin rasboras, emperor tetras, purple tetras, and valentine catfish. My water parameters are good with a temp of 80 degrees.

 

[Colin_T]

Hi and welcome to the forum

Can you post a picture of the plants?

Barbs will chew up plants. Do the leaves have little bite marks along the edge?

Crypts grown out of water at the nursery will drop their leaves when put under water and grow new submersed leaves over the next few weeks. If they have root rot it will cause them to drop leaves too. The rhizome should be clean firm and have no black or soft squishy parts. The soft squishy bits are rotting and should be removed from the plant.

 

[Byron]

I agree that the most likely issue here is the transplanting. Crypts are notorious for "melting" if they are disturbed in any way, which includes transplanting, changing environments, water parameter changes, temperature changes, lighting changes...anything. Make sure you have them planted where you want them,. siphon out the mush that usually accumulates as the leaves melt/dissolve, and in time they should grow new leaves.

On another issue, the temperature is too warm for most of these fish species. Lowering it to 75-76 would be better. Temperature drives fish metabolism since the fish are ectotherms, and the warmer the water (above their "norm") the harder the fish must work just to maintain body functions. This weakens them leading to other issues in time.

Welcome to TFF.