Re: Large plant removal technique

[Thomas Barr <tcbiii at earthlink_net>]

I hope I can explain this well enough in words. It's easy to show in person.

Basically, you sink your fingers down deep about 1-2 inches away from the
plant's crown. Pull the roots towards the plant **horizontally**. Do this on
each 1/4 to 1/8 circular section in a pie like fashion. You can take all the
time you need in doing this. Pull the roots towards the plant's crown and
bunch them up close to the plant but keep your fingers deep in the gravel as
you do this. The root will clump up near the plant. Try not to pull up too
much mulm from down deep. You can do this over the course of a 2 weeks doing
only 1/4 each time and /or try this slowly as you want. You can take a day
if you want. Or you can spend about 10 minutes carefully pulling the whole
thing up and out.
As you get to the last few roots pulled in towards the center, now it's time
to do something a little different.
Spin the plant. Twist it around and around while holding on to the root ball
to pull in the smaller attached roots. After spinning the plant perhaps 3-4
rotations, *Slowly* shake the plant loose and pull it out. You spin the
plant very slowly. Hang on to the root mass as best you can as you turn.
Try not damage the root ball crown area. It's fine if you lose a fair amount
of the long roots. 

Now the next part. Vacuum the area good. Do a good sized water change. Add
more plants, fast growing one to fill in the gap left by this "tree". It was
bring a lot of O2 down into the substrate, now that's changed. Get fresh
plants back in to fill that place back in fast.

Regards, 
Tom Barr