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Re: Anachris melting
well, Anachris grows exceptionally fast, I remember when I added it it was
doing really well at .1 ppm a week, but within a month growth really slowed
down and started becoming like what you described, not until recently have I
added 4x the amount of trace elements to get it kicking again, it was just
amazing, now i have to prune every 2 days since i'm in a 10 gallon tank, now
1/4th of the tank is just a huge anachris bush. Anachris is great for
killing algae, however, if you have no algae either you have a perfect
balance (which you can't maintain long w/ anachris) or anachris is sucking
up all the nutrients outcompeting all the other plants and algae. Infact,
you could use anachris to get rid of algae rather than having algae eaters.
I had a small pond in my backyard that was covered in green algae, I threw
in some anachris strands and it's cleared up within 2 weeks completely.
Anachris is known for elimintating entire species of plants and algae and is
considered to be a noxious weed. It can grow 2" in ideal conditions, I get
atleast 1" a day. It also requires high lighting, idealy 3W+ per gallon. tho
it will survive in 1.5W/g if nutrients are in the proper amounts., which it
sounds like they are not. I dont think I've seen anachris become really
yellow in an iron deficiency state, but it does begin to deterioate, leaves
become smaller and more condense and just fall apart. Also Anachris doesn't
develop roots tho it will develop strands inside the gravel much like hygro
can develop strands far above the gravel for efficient nutrient consumption,
usually anachris is a floating plant, but you can still keep it in the
gravel which is what I do. I noticed that it starved my oto's for a while
till I started supplementing with zucchini. I've gotten rid of like every
algae using anachris including BBA, other red algaes, green spot, etc.
However BBA still has to be manually removed since it doesn't die, it just
won't grow. As long as there's nitrate you shouldn't have BBA. I'm still
finding it difficult to cultivate algae w/ adding .1ppm of iron a day, tho
my plants are loving it. Also Anachris really improves with co2, but it
needs high dosing since it will really outcompete all other plants fast, and
must be pruned regularly, I nearly lost hygro and all my other plants
because I wasn't increasing the dosing with the increase in anachris. So I
would either increase dosing till you come up w/ algae, or be safe and get
an Iron test. Even if you were to start culturing some algae it wouldn't
last long with the increased anachris growth as long as you dont like dose
in incredibly high ammounts, try dosing twice as much as you are now and see
what happens, if algae still isn't growing after a wee or two, make it 3x,
and tweak it until you've got really high growth and no algae.
- Matt
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 11:33:07 -0800 (PST)
> From: Beverly Shutes <heavensabvus at yahoo_com>
> Subject: Re: Anachris melting
>
> Anyone have experience with Anachris (I think "Elodea
> Densa")?
>
> When I bought a bunch of stalks one month ago they was
> very robust looking, with big leaves. After planting
> they started growing like crazy. After shooting up,
> the leaves very quickly started shrinking. Now all
> the shoots are long and skinny with little, sparse
> leaves. Furthermore, some of them uprooted and I saw
> that many stalks had never developed any roots and the
> bottoms were just rotting/melting.
>
> Anyone have any idea what type of deficiency would
> cause this? I am guessing that they used up something
> quickly. I dose TMG and N03. Hygrophilia and vals
> are doing great. There was no algae on these although
> I do have some floating algae spores in the water.
>
> Probably something obvious I have overlooked?
> Beverly