long term plant maintenance needed???

[Magnum Man23 138]

I’ve got several plants in / on my tanks… looking to chat about general plant maintenance…

on rhyzome plants, they seem to need to have the rhyzomes above the substrate… so, once they are growing well, if the rhyzomes get covered, weather by fish landscaping, mulm coverage, the plants will suffer??? how do you protect from that???

I don’t personally add fertilizers to my tanks, as I feel they in general not good for the fish… so what fertilizers do you use in your tanks???

the old aquarium standard for growing out of aquariums are pothos vines, and I have a lot of them, but find them high maintenance, my problem. is they seem to lose leaves along the vines, and don’t regrow them, so I end up with bare sections of vine, and a lot of dead leaves to pluck… I also use a lot of peace lilies, with the same type of problems in plucking dead leaves and flower stems… I’ve been experimenting with Hoyas, and find they don’t lose leave the same, and if they do, they often grow out a new shoot, from the old leaf area..

so what plants work for you, and how do you keep them alive and looking good???

 

[Back in the fold1]

I have an Amazon Swordplant of an unknown variety that I inherited from a Granddaughter . I’ve had it for five years now which is something in itself owing too my poor aquarium plants skills . It stays the same . If it loses a leaf it grows a new one . I give it no supplemental light and it’s only fertilizer is fish waste . The one thing I’ve only done to it once is reposition it . Terrestrial gardeners constantly repot plants with no ill effects but aquatic plants don’t seem to take to that unless it’s just me and my ham handed efforts .
My hornwort even died out on me and I had it for over a year and a half . I’m probably the only aquarist ever that could kill hornwort .

 

[Rusty_Shackleford22 138]

With rhyzome type plants I tend to stick them on something, driftwood or rocks, I personally don't plant them in the substrate so I've never had that issue.

While I'm redesigning my tank in hopes of making it more biotope-ish, I'm strongly contemplating using some of the same plants I'll be growing submerged in hang on pots and growing them emerged. Specifically an Amazon sword and Brazilian Pennywort. They will both do fine emersed and it gives a feeling of continuity between submerged and emergent growth.

 

[FattyFish]

I do the same, stick them to small stones with a bit of superglue. This then allows you to just move them around the tank as needed/prefered. I have a couple of small "Monstera deliciosa, the Swiss cheese plant" sticking out the top of my tank with the roots in the water. They work a treat.

 

[Uberhoust1]

I usually let rhizome type plants just grow where they are, they seem to send roots down and establish where their rhizomes at the level that works best for them. Initially I just weight them down with a small rock. For stolon type plants, Vallisneria spp., I let them extend into new florets, once a floret is established, I will move it if it is not in the right location and will often remove an older floret for each new floret I find, seems to keep them vigorous. I gave up on stem type plants some time ago because they seem to need more continuous treatment. Normal rooted plants, Amazons, I tend to plant once and then let them develop their root systems. I usually do a full tear down every 2 or 3 years at that time, at that time I prune both the roots and the leaves, with simple leaf pruning between the big prune events. I will say I am not very artistic and tend to let the plants grow where they want.