Lead plants

[Tokis-Phoenix]

This is somthing i have been wondering about for a while now; whenever i buy plants from my lfs they always come in a little clump of them tied together in a little strip of lead.
Basically im sure you all know that back during the victorian times they used lead to make water pipes out of lead but it was eventually banned because they figured lead was very toxic and kept on poisoning people.
Why should it be any different for fish? In fact, fish appear to be alot more sensitive to these kind of things and a lot less tolerant; Tumors, cancer and birth defects are not that unusual amoungst fish particualy ones like guppys but everyone just seems to put it down to inbreeding in the fish.
I was wondering how much lead could contribute to things like this and wether the practice of using lead in plants should be banned. What do you think?

 

[colegamby]

i read somewhere that lead doesnt ionize in water with a slightly basic pH. It was on another forum where the guy explained that the lead doesnt seep into the water because of fish water's pH. As long as your pH doesnt get to out of hand it should be alright for your fish. Just try to not handle the lead yourself to much.

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

What exactly do you mean about the ph? My ph is around neutral but the water around my area is quite hard.
Don't you think there should be more warning about buying plants with lead for people with different ph's? the situation could be quite serious expecially if you are a fish breeder- i for one never knew about this.
I have already removed all the lead fastenings on my plants as they seem to grow better without them.

 

[colegamby]

i really dont remember wether it said anything about why the pH kept the lead from seeping into the water ill look for that article again. I just remember it saying the lead was safe as long as your pH stayed in a reasonable range.

 

[colegamby]

here it is

But lead is a heavy metal and can be poisonous. This is especially a problem in an aquarium with water that has a very low pH. Most aquariums in the U.S. have water with a high pH. I'm told lead doesnt dissolve in water with a high pH.


not to scientific but this guy seems to know what he is talking about when it comes to fish keeping.

 

[nc_nutcase]

I'm in Char, NC and my ph is between 6 & 6.2 out of the tap... so not 'all' water in the US has a completely neutral PH.

By the way, I've always been told to take the tie off of plants... I thought that was a hobby standard...

 

[Yenko]

Yes, you should always remove the lead. The main reason to remove the lead is to remove the foam that surrounds the roots. Once you remove the foam you can plant the individual plants seperately, which leads to better plant health. I once made a real mess by planting 3 cryptocoryne plantlets together that way; the end result was the 3 plants competing for light and generally not growing much.

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

Oh i didn't know you had to take the lead off the plants; i just started doing it recently because the majority of my plants don't grow very well with the lead on, and thats probably why they don't.
My lfs owner didn't have a clue about this but then again he hasn't been running the shop very long and i have been having to teach him alot of things about fish but thankfully he listens so i shall go tell him about the plants.

 

[Paul_MTS]

Lead used on such things are inactive and non-toxic, same as fishing weights. infact it's illegeal to fish with toxic lead weights.

these are totally safe in tanks though and if you have good fishy diggers then lead weighting your plants will help them to stay in the substrate and give them more time to gain there own anchorage.

 

[SarahBravo]

Yeah, I take the lead and foam off all my plants, although sometimes with very 'floaty' plants I take the lead and the foam off, retrim the end of the plants, take off any leaves within 1.5" of the bottom, cut the lead up, wrap the lead around each stem again and then plant them individually. If you leave the foam on the stems are too close together and there are usually leaves left on, and all this does is make the stems rot. You can plant them close together but not touching.

I also re-use the lead when the plants have roots to weigh down chunks of cucumber for the fish to eat.

Sarah

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

Cheers for the info everyone, i found it very helpful

 

[SirMinion]

The answer to this is simple.

It's not lead.

It looks like lead and the weights are often refered to as 'lead weights' but it's actually an alloy of several considerably less harmful metals including aluminium.

Carbon in the filter and water conditioner added during water changes will neutralise the tiny amount of metal ions that the weights leech into the water.