Plant on driftwood acclimation

Hello all. I bought a small piece of driftwood with a plant already attached. It appears to be a ribbon plant. My question is, how do I get it ready to go into the tank?

My plan is to put this plant into a new 5 gallon hex tank that I just got today. I have a dry 3 gallon that I could use as a quarantine for the plant.

At the store, the employee picked off as many snails as he could find.

So what's the best way to do this? All help is greatly appreciated!

 

Hello Donner,

If you have snails on your plant I would advise doing a dip I know there are guidelines to do that in the plant section though I have no idea where. Personally if plants have contaminations like massive amounts of snails I don't buy them but that's just me (not really going to help you much) That would be my suggestion. Another thing you can do is set up a separate tank with only the plant and piece of squash in the aquarium. Basically what will happen is that the snails will start to migrate squash as they accumulate on the squash you can remove the snails attached to it and dispose of them however you see fit. So how you proceed is up to you but I wish you the best of luck!
~Inari

 

A lot of times you can do a warm water wash to remove most snails but this will do nothing much about snail eggs. The warm water seems to just get the snails to turn loose and drop off because they close up to protect themselves from the heated water but it will not cause the eggs to fall off. I would just quarantine it for a week or so in the smaller tank after washing it and watch for signs of their off spring. As suggested there are dips you can use on plants to remove snails but I have never used any of them.

 

Thank you both! How do I wash the driftwood/plant? Just under tapwater?

What do you think about this...I have to do a partial water change on my 2 gallon. What if I put the waste tank water in the 3 gallon and then put the driftwood/plant in there? After I do a wash(?)

Thanks!

 

Well when I. Bought my driftwood from petco I immediately put in in in a quarantine tank with squash I after 3 days and many squash slices later I took all the snails and put them in my oscar tank and put the driftwood in my community tank

 

What Luke has is probaby the best bet, to wash off your plant I would advise warm water (around 80 degees) Like Donner said this will get the snails to fall off then you can do whatever you want with them. I would get a fresh piece of squash about a medium size you will use ALOT of freaking squash.

You can use the waste water, it will help kill off some of the snails as well as help your plant. It may seem 'sick and twisted' but honestly I'm not a fan of common snails, so do whatever you want with them;

Best of luck and let us know if you need further help!
~Inari

 

Good morning,

Below is a link that you may find helpful:


Ken

 

What Luke has is probaby the best bet, to wash off your plant I would advise warm water (around 80 degees) Like Donner said this will get the snails to fall off then you can do whatever you want with them. I would get a fresh piece of squash about a medium size you will use ALOT of freaking squash.

You can use the waste water, it will help kill off some of the snails as well as help your plant. It may seem 'sick and twisted' but honestly I'm not a fan of common snails, so do whatever you want with them;

Best of luck and let us know if you need further help!
~Inari

What Do you mean by waste water I don't understand and it really got me thinking

 

I believe by waste water InarI means used tank water from a water change, but I could be wrong.

 

I have never heard of water water or used tank water killing snails. That is a new one on me. I use mine to water my house plants with, never seen a snail on them, who knows.

 

Thank you all, and great link, Ken!
OK, so I just soaked the driftwood/plant in bleach solution, rinsed it several times, and put it back in QT with some tank water from my 2 gallon. I also added enough Prime-conditioned water to the QT to cover the plant.

After the bleach soak, the leaves look much cleaner. Oh, and it is a white ribbon plant that is attached to the driftwood.

Any other suggestions? Does this sound good so far?

 

Once again I'm answering for Inari, but the way I understood what was said was to use warm water to rinse the plants in (about 80 degrees). So I am assuming he is saying to use the old tank water since it should be warm if keeping tropical fish in it.

But I could be wrong, that's just my interpetation. Sure would be nice if InarI would come back and clarify.

 

Let me clarify for Inari, since he/she was responding to my earlier post. In my early post, I asked if I could use "waste tank water" from a partial water change to set up the 2 gallon QT (see above) for the plant.

When he responded, I believe he simply piggybacked on Luke's suggestion for rinsing the plant in warm water (not tank water) to kill any snails.

Hope this helps!

 

If you do not want to have tanins in your tank, you could boil the driftwood. Boiling the driftwood will extract most of the tanins out depending on how long you boil the driftwood. I boiled mine for 2-3 hours and that got rid of all my tanins. Boiling will also kill any snail eggs on the driftwood.

As for the plant, ribbon plants are not fully aquatic and will slowly die in an aquarium. I advise against adding it in your tank.

 

Thanks, GTK. So...
Hmmm.
1) remove the attached plant, boil the driftwood (maybe) and keep the wood.
2) return the whole thing to PetSmart.

Perhaps this explains why the plant/driftwood was 50% off and on clearance.

 

Are you sure it is a ribbon plant? It is usually anubias that is sold attached to driftwood.

Thread moved to the Aquarium Plant forum.

 

Yes, unfortunately. They had an anubias, but someone beat me to it.

I'm going to try to get a photo.

 

/Users/donnaweyd/Desktop/IMG_1415.JPG

It doesn't work like that

 

Here's a picture of the plant on driftwood. I'm pretty sure that it is a white ribbon plant...

 

Yeah, that is definitely a ribbon plant. They make great potted plants, but cannot survive submersion. I had potted one that grew 6 foot tall. That plant was huge!

 

so what do you recommend?

 

If you decide to keep the plant, separate it from the driftwood and stick it into a pot; and treat it like a house plant. It needs to have its leaves out of the water to survive.

 

Thanks! x

 

Sorry all,

Usually I'm pretty good about checking back atleast daily. When I said waste water I was actually refering to the water that is from a water change. While it probably won't out right kill the snails it may stress them out enough to have a few drop dead from the 'higher' concentrations of Ammonia and such. Also most plants love that stuff so it will help the plant as well.

As for setting up a Q tank, the waste water as I refered to earlier will the benifcial bacteria will be present and finish the cycle a lot quicker.

I hope that makes sense!!!

-Inari

 

Update. Well, I removed the ribbon plant from the driftwood, and the most putrefying smell wafted up out of the sink. Gross, to put it mildly.

So I'm soaking the wood now in an attempt to salvage it. Kudos to PetSmart for refunding my money. The manager did say that PetSmart will no longer sell plants that have been kept in their tanks.

I did "mention" the fact that this particular plant was not an aquatic one.

 

honestly don't try to hold then to it they won't do usually just fyi