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Pet Forum / Aquaria / Goldfish / August 2005my silk plants are dying!
okay, i KNOW this sounds crazy but here's what's happening. i have a 29 gallon tank with an emperor 280 filter system and sand on the bottom. i do a 50% water change at least every two weeks. i've had this set up now with my three goldies (orandas) for 1.5 years now and everything was great. water was crystal clear, water looked great, and the fish were happy and healthy. about five weeks ago, one of my silk plants inside the aquarium started drooping. a week later, it was practically laying on the floor! at about the same time, the water started turning murky within days after a water change. then, last week, a second silk plant did the "droop" and this week, another! what is going on here?!? i'm so perplexed. the fish still seem healthy and have not changed their behavior. and, my water now gets murky within 2-3 days after a water change. help! I wonder if the plastic in the plants lasts that long. Have you tried new plastic plants???? Also bacteria infections can occur so that maybe the problem with the water.....do you salt the water? Larry Carmichael/Sacramento hi larry, thanks for the reply. yes, i do add salt to the water. the plastic plants i have in the tank are fine but it is the silk plants (marineland's sea garden plants) that are all droopy. i've written to marineland to ask them if they've heard of this. it's entirely possible that the silk of the foliage just breaks down and it loses any buoyancy i suppose. >I wonder if the plastic in the plants lasts that long. Have you tried > new plastic plants???? Also bacteria infections can occur so that maybe > the problem with the water.....do you salt the water? > Larry > Carmichael/Sacramento An unbelievable number of things absorb water, even cement. Some things fast (bounty the quicker picker upper) some things very slowly. So its possible that the silk has done just that and its "weighed" down with water and lost its ability to retain its shape. If they weren't cheap plants I would be ticked and certainly not inclined to buy more. However, if you take the plants out and let them dry you'ld probably get more life out of them. Leave them on stack of paper towels for a week... nkh... Conventional wisdom would say a 50% water change is waaaaaaay too much. Have you been carrying out this big a change every two weeks since you set the tank up? If so it's possible you're disrupting the Nitrogen cycle and that the tank is in a constant state of breaking in. Often during the Nitrogen cycle a tank will turn cloudy fo the last few days before it becomes stable. If you're taking that much water out you may well be depleting the levels of bacteria to the point where this final stage keeps looping over and over and over.... If your tank is firmly established you should be looking at a 25% change per month. Try easing off a little and perhaps do a 10-20% change every two weeks and see if this remedies the situation. Could be why your plants are biting the big one so quickly. Then again, I might be entirely wrong! That's the joy of being an Aquarist! Disko how interesting...based on what else i've been reading, i should have been doing water changes more often! but, in answer to your question, yes, i've been doing these water changes since i set up the tank and i didn't have these problems until recently. the tank is cloudy again but i'm going to hang on and wait it out to see if it is the nitrogen cycle thingy by clearing on its own. also, as a followup, i wrote to the manufacturer about the plant droop and they sent me replacement plants for free! what great customer service! it's still a mystery why my plants did the droopy thing in the first place though. thanks all for the help so far. > nkh... > [quoted text clipped - 15 lines] > > Disko how can silk plants die?? > how interesting...based on what else i've been reading, i should have been > doing water changes more often! but, in answer to your question, yes, i've [quoted text clipped - 32 lines] >> >> Disko |
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