Plants I Fail To Keep

[da7thson]

Hi guys,

I've tried to keep Valis now a couple of times (both the normal leaf and the dwarf twist leaf) and also HC (Cuba) and i can't seem to win with them.

The Valis seems to be OK for well over a month and then slowly it looses all its leaves and then nothing.

HC just seems to die in about a week.

I have two tanks, one is a 125L which is low tech - no CO2 just heat and light. The other is 250L, this one i have pressurised CO2 with CO2 monitor in the water and i dose this one with TPN ferts. Neither tank seems to support either plant, so i'm interested to find out what is the secret of these pants?

Cheers

Andy

 

[mattyeatsmatts]

I had the same problem. I trimmed every leaf from the vallis and now I have about 6 new bright green leaves

 

[Teephphah]

Vallis is pretty much the only aquatic plant that I've ever had any real luck at growing. I manage this by completely ignoring it.

Actually, I think the secret is that my water is naturally very hard. I've heard that Vallis likes this. It's not a terribly well-researched or investigated conclusion, but it's the best one I've been able to come up with. But it certainly can't be anything that I'm actively doing for the plant, since I don't do anything. (And my Vallis does better than my Java Fern or Java Moss - the stereotypical "don't do anything to them and they'll be fine" plants.)

As for the HC, that's always been presented as an "advanced" plant, so I've steered clear of that one, knowing it wouldn't stand a chance against my Black Thumb of Doom.

 

[da7thson]

Vallis is pretty much the only aquatic plant that I've ever had any real luck at growing. I manage this by completely ignoring it.

Actually, I think the secret is that my water is naturally very hard. I've heard that Vallis likes this. It's not a terribly well-researched or investigated conclusion, but it's the best one I've been able to come up with. But it certainly can't be anything that I'm actively doing for the plant, since I don't do anything. (And my Vallis does better than my Java Fern or Java Moss - the stereotypical "don't do anything to them and they'll be fine" plants.)

As for the HC, that's always been presented as an "advanced" plant, so I've steered clear of that one, knowing it wouldn't stand a chance against my Black Thumb of Doom.

hmmm thats food for thought as my water is very soft (great for my aspito's), which could be something to look into.

Thanks

Andy

 

[DrRob]

Aye, Vallis grows better in harder water. I've got some growing, very badly, in some soft water, but it's not happy.

HC is a challenging plant. I've managed to grow it under very high light, but at those levels it gets to be a challenge to keep the balance right. I suspect that that's part of the reason people grow it....

 

[SO19Firearms]

I'm pretty sure ppls problem with Vallis is a Calcium deficiency. Those that grow it well are more often than not in a hard water area meaning good magnesium and calcium levels. You won't find calcium in liquid ferts and in recent years the calcium element has been dropped from the latest incarnations of EI so that doesn't pick up the slack either....
Calcium - It's Calciyummy!




But I know somebody has a plan to fix EI....

 

[Aquamaniac]

No problem with vallis here. Never tried HC though.
But i did get a better and healthier growth on a tank with, yeast co2 and no ferts apart from a earthworm castings fertile soil. And this tank was in portugal.The growth was so fast that if i did not kept cutting them down they would take over the tank.
Now forward to last year and with a hight tech tank,fertile soil,pressurized co2 well basically a much better setting than before and the vallis growth was much slower i hardly ever had to cut it and they did not look as healthy.
I know there's not two tanks alike, but this confused me for some time.
The fact that the second tank was in the Uk hence definetely diferent water might have been the diference here as some suggested above.

The vallis i used were the gigantea.