My S Repens Is Melting Again!

ive got a planted tank with a good filter and led lights neutral pH. A thick layer ADA aquasoil with a base layer of fert’s and additional ferts in the soil. It’s a pretty new tank. Almost 1 month old. All my other plants have been doing fine. Been getting a lot of hair algae though and have high nitrites rn. My first batch of S Repens I planted with the rest of my plants all wilted. Leaves decayed/melted and became semI clear and and nearly 95% just came off the plant. This happened after 1.5-2 weeks of them being in the tank so I pulled them out. I realised my temp was probably too high at 27-28C. So I lowered it to 25-26.

My new batch of S Repens almost immediately started melting. Happened within a few hours... leaves are starting to turn yellow. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong

 

It's normal for certain plants to melt when being planted in a new environment. Just wait for a couple weeks for new growth. CO2 is not required when growing Staurogyne repens.

 

It's normal for certain plants to melt when being planted in a new environment. Just wait for a couple weeks for new growth. CO2 is not required when growing Staurogyne repens.

But why would nearly all the leaves of my old S Repens all fall off? A simple brush of the plant and pretty much half the leaves would come off. Some of those leaves looked even pretty healthy (green, no rot, etc). Could it be lack of lighting? I had around 9 hours a day

 

But why would nearly all the leaves of my old S Repens all fall off? A simple brush of the plant and pretty much half the leaves would come off. Some of those leaves looked even pretty healthy (green, no rot, etc).

Probably because of shock from the water parameters, temperature, or lighting.

 

Where did you get the staurogyne from? Was it from a tank with co2?

 

If I had to guess, it's probably shock. I have s. repens growing under LEDs in ADA aquasoil without CO2 too, but I dry-started them there. When the tank was flooded, they took to the environment quite well because they were well established in the soil by then.

Do you happen to know what your s. repens' roots look like? It's harder for them to deal with the shock of completely new parameters if they don't have strong established roots to feed from.

 

Where did you get the staurogyne from? Was it from a tank with co2?

No idea haha. I ordered them online through an e-vendor since I’m in China.

Not sure if you can see the patches that are missing and another leaf on the left side looks a little like this as well but maybe a bit worse I have more algae that side of the tank so hard to get a good pic

 

This new batch mostly don’t have roots but that one I showed in my picture actually had a few. They’re mostly cuttings I imagine since it’s pretty much all stem

Planted maybe like 5-6 hours ago

 

I noticed plants that come from a co2 enriched tank have to transition to my tank without added pressurized co2. Like everytime. Sometimes they melt completely, sometimes they regrow.

I had a nice staurogyne section in my 90g (24" deep tank). It is fully dirted with bright-ish light, but no added co2. The breakdown of soil provided a small amount, but it did ok with the strong light. It was when I tried a lower light fixture that it melted away slowly. Since it melted so quickly this time, my guess is an acclimation issue as well.

I always remove the lowest leaves (the stubby ones) to encourage the plant to grow roots from there.

 

Staurogyne repens melts easily and usually due to different parameters. However, new soil and ADA soil can release tons of ammonia which will melt staurogyne repens VERY easily. Ammonia of 2ppm+ tend to obliterate S. repens in my experience. It'll regrow though, just give it some time.

angelcraze That's interesting that plants from a hightech environment melt on you. I've never had that issue transferring plants from a hightech tank to a lowtech tank. Most of the time IME, the plants won't shed any leaves and will keep really nice looking lower leaves while the newer growth then starts to take on a lowtech appearance. Then again, I only had easy stems that I was using

 

Vishaquatics Maybe the stems I was trying to grow from high tech were harder to grow plants. I guess that's why my LFS had them in the co2 enriched tank ha! I will say that the store doesn't use co2 anymore in the plants for sale tank because of that reason-low tech customers were seeing better transition and it's really no problem to go from low tech to high tech.

The plants that have melted on me: blyxia japonica, hygro araguaia, reneikI sp.mini, staurogyne. Yep, staurogyne was one of them. I could grow it in my 90g low tech when I got it from a low tech tank, but not from the LFS tank with co2.

 

Vishaquatics Maybe the stems I was trying to grow from high tech were harder to grow plants. I guess that's why my LFS had them in the co2 enriched tank ha! I will say that the store doesn't use co2 anymore in the plants for sale tank because of that reason-low tech customers were seeing better transition and it's really no problem to go from low tech to high tech.

The plants that have melted on me: blyxia japonica, hygro araguaia, reneikI sp.mini, staurogyne. Yep, staurogyne was one of them. I could grow it in my 90g low tech when I got it from a low tech tank, but not from the LFS tank with co2.

Yea those ones tend to be super finnicky. Especially the blyxa and the hygro.

Easy hygrophilas, ludwigias, bacopas, and rotalas tend to not melt when transitioned from high tech to Lowtech.

 

I guess the 'trick' is to have staurogyne plants that are well established before you push it with deep tanks/lower light than it typically calls for. I mean dry starts or established mature plants from a low tech (or tank similar in params).

Hopefully they will rebound. Don't give up unless they are completely gone.