Java Fern Mother Plant - Adivce Needed

[FishyWishie]

I took delivery today of a Java Fern mother plant I bought via this forum. It looks great and I cant wait to get it planted however I'm not sure how best to proceed. It came in a tropica plastic pot with the plants roots in a block of something that resembled a very dense type of oasis foam (removable but not easily as root are down about 2/3 into it) I would prefer to anchor the plant to a bog wood chunk is there any way I could do this ?

I did consider tying the bogwood to the front of the foam type block so the block sits on the sand but from the front it appears its attached to the wood but I thought maybe theres a better way someone out there can think of ?

 

[PDSimon]

The stuff the roots are in is called rockwool or mineral wool. You should remove it all, it helps if you have a bucket of water. You keep dipping the wool into the water and taking of little pieces around the roots. Try your best to keep as much of the plant as possible.

I Found the best way of anchoring is to use glue but some use fishing line, just tie it over the rhizome several times.

 

[ZoddyZod]

you can use super glue but make sure the one you buy is pure cyanoacrylate. You will see this stated in the ingredients list. This is harmless and will not damage your plants or fish.

 

[FishyWishie]

Awesome cheers for the replys Ive managed to remove about 90% of the rockwool the last 10% or so is tricy as its far more rooted than the rest Im trying to make sure im not pulling out more roots than rockwool now.

 

[PDSimon]

Little bits won't really matter

 

[FishyWishie]

 

[PDSimon]

g15 hey, what games do you play

the more stuff you can get of it the better, its quite dark and you won't want to be able to see it. I managed to get most of mine but pulled a fair amount of roots of too

 

[FishyWishie]

Mostly EVE Online though I do have a Warhammer Online sub

im picking it out with tweezers now

 

[PDSimon]

try and keep the leaves fairly wet btw, although it should be fine i am always safety first

if things went perfectly you'd end up with the rhizome and all the roots coming out of them... and then its fairly easy to spread around.


I'm more of COD and battlefield player

 

[FishyWishie]

Rgr that Ill go wet the laeves again while I tweezer COD is ace tho I play it on the 360 along with Battefield 2

 

[SuperColey1]

You lot are far too careful with your plants. lol

Pull the rockwoold off? I would've just cut all the roots as close to the rhizome as possible and therefore the rockwool with it.

Rhizome plant roots are a little worthless to us in the beginning. We are using something else to attach the plant and we want new roots not old ones. The old ones will just wave around in the water. New roots will 'grab'

AC

 

[waterdrop]

Well I'll be darned, just when I was going to leave work and go home to enjoy watching all my waving brown roots with a beer. And I'm serious, I rather like a bit of the jungle from those long ones, ha!

 

[FishyWishie]

Seperate issue but I didn't want to make a brand new topic for it

I believe that dosing ferts such as TPN + can cause false readings of ammonia ? How high can this false reading show ?

My Nitrites have been sub 12 hrs for a few weeks now but ammonia always reads 2+ maybe a little lighter than 4 however I know the ammonia was cycling in < 12 hours before I started to dose ferts. Should I be worried at this point or just ignore the ammonia readings ? Im planning to stock on friday and i'm a little aprhensive over interprating what the ammonia reading really is.

 

[SuperColey1]

Unless the ammonia test is measuring something else with the assumption it signifys ammonia then this won't be the case.

For example a drop checker 'measures' CO2 levels by measuring the Ph of the known reference and not measuring the actual CO2.

TPN+ contains urea not ammonia so it doesn't put any ammonia into the tank. Therefore unless the test kit is counting the urea as ammonia then it shouldn't affect it.

AC

 

[FishyWishie]

Thanks for the reply im now more confused than ever

I have 0 Nitrates from about 8 hours after dosing the ammonia onwards yet I still read ammonia but this has only been the case since plants were added and ferts dosed. Theres obviously the odd dead leave which I remove as soon as i notice them but certainly not enough rotting plant matter to show such a reading of ammonia.