Does Temperature Affect Plant Growth?

[jlOisAhoTti]

Does pH levels and temperature in a fish tank affect how a plant grows?

 

[three-fingers]

Depends on the plant your talking about, but yes in general .

 

[jlOisAhoTti]

Is it better to have a higher or lower temperature? In general.

 

[three-fingers]

Now that, i cant say, it depends entirely on the plant. I have some plants from my pond growing in my tank, it grows very slowly at 23 degrees celcius, but in the unheated tank in the other room it has uncontrollable growth at around 18 celcius, and both of these tanks have about the same lighting.
While my java fern grows very fast at 23 celcius, it has barely changed in the unheated tank .
There are lots of other more important factors though.

 

[jlOisAhoTti]

Well I don't know whats wrong with my plants, just unlucky I guess.
-5500k incandescent
-iron
-carbon
-potassium
and I don't know what else that they would need. pH is about 6.4 and temp is about 83(Trying to adjust the heater)

 

[bUcky]

I DONT KNOW TO MUCH ABOUT THIS, BUT I knw that incandesent are the worst kind of light used for plant growth. i know you would be better using a flourescent blub. right?

 

[three-fingers]

Yeah, from what i've been reading, and from experience you cant use incandescent lights to grow aquatic plants. When i tried, the plants grew, but the leaves all went glassy.

 

[jlOisAhoTti]

I always get the two confused, which one is the one that pet stores usually sell?

 

[atmmachine816]

You can buy fluescent screw in bulbs to replace incadescent bulbs. It's cheap strong lighting for smaller tanks.

atm

 

[Liam]

83 is on the high side for many plants. Yeah PH temp hardness etc all make a difference to plants but just like fish, most of them are pretty adaptable.

 

[Underwurlde]

Well I don't know whats wrong with my plants, just unlucky I guess.
-5500k incandescent
-iron
-carbon
-potassium
and I don't know what else that they would need. pH is about 6.4 and temp is about 83(Trying to adjust the heater)

In order for aquatic plants to thrive in an aquarium they must be provided with the correct nutrients. These can be broken down into two main constituents, macro-nutrients and micro-nutrients, if you keep these nutrients in an abundant supply you should have happy thriving plants and an algae free tank.

Plants Require the following 17 elements:
90% of a plant’s bulk is: Oxygen[O] & Hydrogen [H] (Water, H2O) and Carbon [C] from CO2 (essential for plant growth)
Primary Macro-nutrients: Nitrogen [N], Phosphate [P], Potassium [K]
Secondary Macro-Nutrients: Calcium [Ca], Magnesium [Mg], Sulphur
Trace Elements: Boron , Chlorine [Cl], Nickel [Ni], Copper [Cu], Iron [Fe]
Manganese [Mn], Molybdenum [Mo], Zinc [Zn]

Andy

 

[jlOisAhoTti]

I recently bought a 18000k flourecent, now I know what your going to say, algae but I've got a full staff(Plecos, ghost shrimp, amano shrimp, SAE, and Albino cory) so I should be ok. I just want my plants to grow faster than they are now.

 

[Underwurlde]

Regardless of your cleanup crew, high lighting & no CO2 = algae.

The key to an algae-less tank is correct CO2 levels for your plants. That (and dosing) will make the plants grow - the plant growth will dominate out & hence eradicate any algae growth.

So, question is, do you have CO2? It will now be crucial in your setup!

Andy

 

[George Farmer]

Most plants like temp. around 25C / 77F. Most will adapt to lower and higher temps, within reason. Most will also adapt to varying pH, from 5 up to 9.

So temp. and pH aren't really an issue for most. Appropriate lighting, CO2 levels and other nutrients are issues that should be priority, as well as planting heavily.

A large, waste producing algae-crew will likely be contributing more to algae issues.