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Emersed to Submersed

tubamanandy

tubamanandy

Member
Joined
28 Feb 2013
Messages
362
Location
Thornton, Lancashire
I hope I'm not covering a load of old ground here,but, I need a good understanding of how we buy our plants at the local fish shop as, despite almost optimal conditions, they almost always start to die off within the first few weeks in my tank before a different `type` of growth appears.

Would I be correct in thinking most plants bought at my LFS are grown emersed ? If we then buy the plants and plant them in our tanks they are submerged - which cannot be easy on the plants.

Is there a correct way to maintain the plants over the next few weeks to ensure they grow ? (eg. low light/nutrients/CO2). I tend to see mine almost wither away, cut them back and you see a different type of growth - I could be wrong but would really like to be enlightened.

Not sure I have put this the best way I can but I hope you get what I am talking about
 
Hi
Most aquatic plants you can purchase from your local aquatic shop or on-line a grown with just their roots in water.
Most will lose their leaves over time and grow submerged leaves....sometimes its best to purchase from fellow plant growers as these will usually be already in the submerged state.
Lots of Co2 and Macro/Micro with medium light will help your plants transform to the underwater environment easier....and quicker.
Cheers
hoggie
 
I don't think you can buy commercially grown submersed plants, it just would not make any commercial sense compared to growing out of water!
You can see plants grown underwater for sale most days on this forum from our members.
You don't always get plant melt, not if you can supply huge amounts of C02, but this is not easy if you have fish or shrimp in the tank.
 
Nice one - dont mind paying a bit extra for not having to see them decline so bad before coming good. Anyone else know where to buy the underwater grown variety ?
 
It doesn't matter whether your plants are grown submersed or emmersed. If the CO2 availability in your tank is less than what it was in the previous location it will rot and decay in exactly the same way as you have reported in your opening post.

My plants never wither away when inserted, regardless of where I got them, or how they were grown. My plants are always in their worst condition when they first arrive from the supplier. They always immediately begin to improve unless they were already dead. That's because I manage the lighting, nutrient loading, and first and foremost, I ensure maximum CO2 availability along with adequate flow and distribution.

That should be your goal. The solution lies there, not in purchasing submerged plants, which I believe is time money and energy wasted. As mentioned, you can get specimens from the Sale/Wanted sub-forum unless you are after something very specific.

Somewhere along the line in your process, there is an anomaly which results in a net loss of CO2 with respect to their original location.
If the plants had managed to survive and are healthy from the supplier, then it means they were using excellent CO2 techniques, so this means that your technique need also be excellent.

Investigate every area of your technique to maximize it's contribution to excellent CO2. Manage lighting, ensure adequate flow and distribution and manage the CO2 dissolution. Ensure large and frequent water changes and even clean the surface of the leaves to remove film and debris which acts as an impediment to CO2 uptake.

CO2 application is both art and science.

Cheers,
 
"If the CO2 availability in your tank is less than what it was in the previous location it will rot and decay in exactly the same way as you have reported in your opening post."

Now I'm confused - surely as most plants bought at our LFS have been grown emersed, then the CO2 availability, when put in our tanks (submersed), is always going to be much wors/lower than the previous location (air) so the plants will always need to go through an acclimatisation ?
 
tubamanandy said:
surely as most plants bought at our LFS have been grown emersed, then the CO2 availability, when put in our tanks (submersed), is always going to be much wors/lower than the previous location (air) so the plants will always need to go through an acclimatisation ?
Click to expand...

I've been reading up on this......a lot as I've two full emersed tanks I'm growing on. it's the amount of acclimatisation they face that we need to control. If rather that a CO2 deprived tank, they are placed in a CO2 optimised tank, the 'shock' can be reduced. Plants live up to the best balance of CO2, ferts & light we make available in the tank. If placed in perfect surroundings (I really need to see ceg4048's tanks :) )they apparently suffer no or little 'shock' and thrive from the off
 
I can't explain it eloquently I'm afraid. Plants need CO2, ferts & light. Certain combinations of these are optimal, lead as always by CO2.

Plants can and frequently do live, but not thrive in lesser conditions. Just as half the UK population don't eat fresh veg or exercise. They don't curl up their toes but are more susceptible, 'on average' to the ravages of illness and poor health. Put a super fit runner into the couch potato lifestyle and in two months they'll barely be able run. Put them into the house of an avid jogger who is tea total and they will maintain close to they're original performance.

Give the plants the equivalent of the avid jogger lifestyle (pretty close to the original) and they should grow on unaffected
 
As James mentioned, CO2 availability should always be considered within the context of light, as well as flow/distribution. There are many obstacles to gas exchange in a plant that gets suddenly flooded. So when we flood a tank with plants grown emmersed, the gas exchange now has to be supported and enhanced. It really isn't even so much that the quantity of CO2 is less. In a gas injected tank there is plenty of gas, but gasses cannot be transported in water as easily as they can be in air. Check the post Cause of death? | UK Aquatic Plant Society for more information.

When you first submerge a plant they no longer have ready access to the important gases, CO2 and Oxygen. The places where air used to flow become flooded. Some gases are produced internal to the plant that have hormonal influences and those gases are not ejected as quickly as they once were, so the gas buildup changes the behavior and physiological response of the plant. Ethylene is such a gas. Certain concentration levels signal the plant to grow leggy, while other concentration levels programs the tissue cells to die.

So when you flood the tank and do not pay attention to the property of gasses in water the plants suffocate.

Injecting high CO2 pressures at the start allows a larger pressure differential of CO2 which helps to overcome some of the barriers to the movement of this gas into the tissue.

Cleaning the tank and preening the leaves removes organic waste buildup, which is a slime coating (bio-film) which covers the leaf and blocks movement of gases across this boundary.

Reducing the light intensity slows the growth and reduces the DEMAND for CO2.

Good flow and distribution encourages greater movement and dissipation of Ethylene away from the plant, so that awkward growth and senescence is reduced or eliminated. Gases that the plant needs also arrive and diffuse more quickly, reducing the stress and enabling better food production.

Regardless of where the plant originates, the combination of light, gas and water flow must be at satisfactory levels, otherwise the tissues are starved and they die.

Here, look at the stems in the background of this photo. You put nice plants in and they turn to mush.

I put mush in:
8505003186_5fa3bb4ebc_b.jpg





....and with careful management of flow/CO2 and nutrition they turn into this:
These are the same two stems that started life off in the tank on the brink of oblivion.

9281335763_2d4e34d3a8_b.jpg


I don't have any of those issues that are so popular, plants rotting, leaves falling off, weird algal blooms. The plants just grow. I don't worry about KH, pH, GH, X, Y or Zh, which is the first mistake people make.

I just ensure that CO2/Flow/Distribution/Nutrients are beyond reproach, and I do not become obsessed with whether I have "enough light", which is the second biggest mistake that people make.

I do not fear nutrients, and I do not delete KNO3 dosing just because some water report or cheesy test kit tells me I have lots of Nitrate in the water, which is the third mistake people make.

I also do not put fish in the tank initially, which handcuffs you tremendously. That is the fourth biggest mistake people make Leave the fish out. Learn how to grow plants and master CO2 first. Then put fish in after you have figured out all the pitfalls.

Cheers,
 

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Hi all,
tubamanandy said:
Anyone else know where to buy the underwater grown variety ?
Click to expand...
There are some plants that will only grow submersed, Ceratophyllum, Cabomba (although it may grow floating emergent leaves), Vallisneria, Blyxa, Elodea, Potamogeton (again some with floating leaves) etc., some of the other posters should be able to add some more.
tubamanandy said:
Now I'm confused - surely as most plants bought at our LFS have been grown emersed, then the CO2 availability, when put in our tanks (submersed), is always going to be much wors/lower than the previous location (air) so the plants will always need to go through an acclimatisation ?
Click to expand...
It is going to depend upon the plant. Slow growing plants with persistent leaves like Java Fern and Anubias (even though they are largely terrestrial) can go from the transition from emersed to submersed without too much of a problem, even without CO2 addition. Other plants (like Hemianthus callitrichoides) are never going to be happy at ambient low levels of CO2 submerged, mainly because they aren't really aquatic plants. Grow them emersed and they are fine <Hemianthus micranthemoides doesn't like me | UK Aquatic Plant Society>.

Plants like Echinodorus, Eleocharis, Cryptocoryne, Hygrophila, Rotala etc are different, they naturally grow where they spend part of the year submersed, and part of the year emergent. This makes them useful for "Tropica" etc because you can grow them emersed, making use of the 400 ppm of CO2 available in the atmosphere, and avoiding algae etc.

The problem comes when you take that plant which is growing emersed and submerge it. If you have a look at these Cryptocoryne pontederiifolia plants you can see the difference in morphology between submerse and emersed.

This is a scan of a plant that has been submersed and grown low tech. <http://www.ukaps.org/forum/threads/cryptocoryne-pontederiifolia.30753/>

cryptocoryne_pon022_zps7813bf63.jpg


And in this link (From Aquaessentials) <http://www.aquaessentials.co.uk/cryptocoryne-pontederiifolia-p-6862.html> this is an emersed grown plant.

If the plant "melts" it means it has shed its emergent leaves, and the new leaves it grows will be submerged leaves. If it dies, it didn't have enough nutrient reserves to survive defoliation.

cheers Darrel
 

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Wow Darrel, thanks very much for that - thoroughly well explained, I'm musc much clearer now on the process and I'm sure it will have helped others.
 
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