Have My Plants Had It ?

[moochy13]

i just replanted my tank after my old swords seemed to enter a period of not growing, but not dying and not looking great.

i got a few decent sized swords, and some sort of really nice looking healthy plant, and everything looekd good.

when i first planted up my then new tank, i got a rusty plec. he ate most of the leaves as in the pics below, but he only done it once, then they looked great as in my sig. he never ate plants again.

now, heres my new plants :

about 2 days it took for that to happen. im not sure if its my rusty this time, i have another smaller plec that i suspect has a taste for them.

anyway, whats the best course of action now ? im thinking of trimming some leaves off, but i cant remove all the eaten ones, there wont be any left. and my new swords havnt got many leaves yet anyway.

 

[mike455555]

are these plants new to the tank? it could be melt?

trim off the more eaten ones than not... and see if they send off more shoots?

 

[moochy13]

yes i put them in within the last 2 weeks. you really thinkt hat could be it. ive never knowingly experienced 'melt'. when i brought my rusty plec, the shop warned me they like plants, but i brought him anyway because he was mint. he did eat my plants, but as i said he only did it once. ive seen my other suspected plec 'on' the plants, and i always assumed this affect on the leaves was from a plec grazing them. maybe i should post a pic in the plec section to find out more..........

thanks

 

[mike455555]

they dont look eaten in the first pic to me... i mean why would the plec leave the edges?. and theres a membrane left between the gaps the plec might of broken these if he was eating them... it might be him but it might also be melt after 2 week's fish of dead leaves and let the new ones grow

 

[moochy13]

thing is you have to imagine a plec doesnt munch on the leaves like a normal fish, from the edge inwards, he literally just lays on top of it scraping the leaves. the edges would be harder to eat, and id imagine less 'juicy'. i'll trim them down a bit tomorrow, thanks.

 

[SO19Firearms]

How much co2 is there? Holes tend to be a lack of co2 - Carbon being the building blocks and all that. No building blocks = holes where they'd normally go....this is usually in conjunction with high light powering it all

 

[moochy13]

nothing is added to the tank, its all natural. same setup as in my sig though, and they done great. all the plants were very healthy looking when i got them. the only difference is a few more fish and a much, much better filter. lightwise, theres only one bulb.

 

[hensonc4098]

To me, it does look like something's been having a munch at them. Not deliberately, but because they're new plants, there'll be traces of algae and things on the leaves that the pleco finds tasty. As he's cleaning the algae off, his raspy mouth also ends up scraping off layers of the leaf, leaving what you have there. Hence it's more patchy and not just eaten entirely. I had this in my 180L with just a bulldog pleco, which is allegedly one of the "better" pleco species for keeping with plants. In the end I ended up relocating him to another tank because i was fed up of it. For now though, trim off as much of the dead leaves as you can. As long as you leave the bulby base of the plant and one or two leaves to photosynthesise, then it will still be able to send leaves up. If you don't want to cut all the leaves off just now, hold off until a couple of new leaves have come up and then trim the old. Sword species cannot repair their leaves, so cutting off damaged leaves will allow them to put more energy into making new leaves You may find that the plecos won't touch the new leaves, but you could end up with them accidentally damaging the leaves when cleaning them as they are now.