Advice on poorly Vallisneria

[foxgirl158]

I just planted 4 Vallis plants in my cycling high school library tank that I started. These plants have had a rough go, sitting in a warehouse for 5 days in -5 temps, sitting on my doorstep for 4 hours because the delivery driver didn’t ring the doorbell in -3 temps, then sitting in a shallow bowl with water while I figured out a time to bring them to the school.
They look pretty bad, 3 of 4 are flopped over on the sand and all of them lost strands that came off when I submerged them. They have a good white light and a good red light that’ll be on for roughly 11 hours a day. Whats the best fertilizer for them that’s safe for nerite snails and platy fish? Is there anything else I can do for them besides just giving them time to settle? Thanks you!

 

[Uberhoust]

Not my area of expertise but I grow a lot of Vals and yours look to be in bad shape. They kind of look like jungle vals though it it hard to say. Leave them alone a while, they will start growing leaves and stolons if they are OK time will tell. They can lose their leaves but if the growing point did not freeze, the meristem, they stand a good chance of growing.

 

[foxgirl158]

Not my area of expertise but I grow a lot of Vals and yours look to be in bad shape. They kind of look like jungle vals though it it hard to say. Leave them alone a while, they will start growing leaves and stolons if they are OK time will tell. They can lose their leaves but if the growing point did not freeze, the meristem, they stand a good chance of growing.

Modern aquarium website said this was spiral Vallis I think. If the stolons are knobby bits by the roots, the healthy-ish one definitely has them. Not sure about the others.

 

[Colin_T]

The leaves are dead. They might recover but if they were frozen and without light for 5 days, they are probably stuffed. Remove the soft mushy green leaves and leave the root ball in the sand. See what happens.

Sera Florena is a liquid iron based aquarium plant fertiliser that I used and it certainly helped my plants. Use an Iron (Fe) test kit to measure the iron levels and keep them around 1mg/ltr (1ppm).