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Marsilea Crenata die off and BBA advice/help

S

Swim Shady

Member
Joined
15 May 2022
Messages
26
Location
UK
Hi all

Im just after a little bit advice regarding 2 issues im currently having in my tank that I started up in November.
Ive started to get BBA on some of the lava rock and also on the leaves of a few of the taller plants along with white fungus on the wood.
Im currently spot treating this with ADA Pyhton Git and also manually removing it and cutting back affected leaves.
The wood was soaked for 2 weeks before going in the tank and I remove the white fungus twice a week with a tooth brush whilst carrying out the water change.
My question is why is this suddenley happening and any advice to improve the problem or stop the BBA and fungus would be appreciated.
The 2nd issue im now facing is the constant die back of Marsilea Crenata.
I have this planted in 2 locations - front left of tank between lava rock and wood and also right middle again between lava rock and wood.
I planted a few tissue culture pots of this in december and it died back after a few weeks so at the start of January I replanted some new plants from tissue cultures. Again 3/4 weeks later they have completley died back.
Does anyone have any ideas/suggestions of what to do next?
The tank is a Ehiem Clearscape 73ltr
Filter is a Oase Biomaster thermo 600 with glass lily pipes (overkill i know but i'd rather to much over not enough)
Eheim skimmer on 24/7
Co2 injected via a inline diffuser with the drop checker light green. This is on a wifi timer and comes on 3 hours before lights on and off at lights off.
Light is a Twinstar 450sa on a wifi timer for 8 hrs per day at full intensity.
I change 50% of the water twice a week.
Daily fert of 2hr aquarist at the suggested dose for tank size (2 pumps)
5ml of Seachem trace twice a week
My water parameters seen to be withing the acceptable fiqures but then I know every tank is different.
Before Co2 i have a Ph of roughly 7 to 6.8 and with Co2 this drops to aprrox 5.9 to 6 (i use a digital tester for this)
TDS is 224
Temp 22/23c
I use test strips for the below so these results arent as precise
My nitrates float between 0 and 25mg/l (depends when i test)
My nitrites again float between 0.00 and 0.2
DH is around 7
KH is between 2 and 3

Stocking is Glowlight tetras (small) x 9, Nean Green Rasboras x 9, Ottos x 2 and a number of cherry shrimps.

Start of Jan you can see the Marsilea is green and looks ok.
Start of Jan.jpg

Then in this one 3/4 weeks later you can see it has all died back and turned brown.
End of Jan.jpg

Hope you experts can point me in the right direction here.
 
Hi
The bacteria growth/fungus will disappear eventually!
BBA....When did you last clean the filter?
Marsilea Crenata what substrate is it planted in?
 
GHNelson said:
Hi
The bacteria growth/fungus will disappear eventually!
BBA....When did you last clean the filter?
Marsilea Crenata what substrate is it planted in?
Click to expand...
Hi the pre filter section of the filter gets cleaned once a week (every other water change) and the main filter section about once every 8 weeks.
The substrate is tropic aquarium soil with a ADA power sand base.
 
Swim Shady said:
Hi the pre filter section of the filter gets cleaned once a week (every other water change) and the main filter section about once every 8 weeks.
The substrate is tropic aquarium soil with a ADA power sand base.
Click to expand...
I would check the Oase main filter sponges!
Not sure this might be an issue try increasing the temperature slightly.
Slightly up the dosing of the Macro fertilizer.
 
GHNelson said:
I would check the Oase main filter sponges!
Not sure this might be an issue try increasing the temperature slightly.
Slightly up the dosing of the Macro fertilizer.
Click to expand...
I will have a look at these tonight then.
Should I try maybe 7ml macros twice a week
 
The quality of tissue culture plants is sometimes problematic. Since all other plants are doing well, I'd stick to this explanation until proved wrong.
 
@Swim Shady
My suggestion is to remove the Marsilea Crenata plants from the substrate and leave them on the surface for a few weeks till they grow new fresh roots then re-plant.
I suspect low Nitrate levels do not help with the adaption of this plant and the substrate is still leaching Ammonia.
 
_Maq_ said:
... which is all but non-existent at this pH.
Click to expand...
That could be a valid point.....I'm not convinced....when doing 50% tap water Water Changes twice a week!
 
@Swim Shady
The Frogbit
They look a tad pale to me and they look a bit deficient.
Have a read at Darrel's great article below!

What is the “Duckweed Index” all about?

What is the “Duckweed Index” all about? I’ve never written a proper “Duckweed Index” article, but, prompted by @GHNelson, I’ve written a short introduction. I’ll break it up into a series of posts (of which this is the first), mainly to avoid author (and reader) fatigue. There is a table of...
www.ukaps.org www.ukaps.org
 
@dw1305 This duckweed index is pretty interesting stuff. I need a comfy chair and a coffee.

Let's say you get the nutrients nailed, are there particular ways to maintain a marsilea crenata (minutia) carpet? Mine seems to be spreading and with new growth that looks ok, but older growth dies back a bit. I have found that it seems to prefer spreading out into sand areas from aquasoil areas and it's as though it both prefers sand and doesn't like the initial dense planting from the culture cup. Like, if I could magically do it, I'd want to have a few neat rows of single runs to get density, rather than a big jumble of short lengths that you get starting from a cup and planting densely.

Perhaps I'm just supposed to be cutting old growth out of the carpet, but that seems tricky to do with this plant?

Any tips greatly appreciated
 
You can try Marsilia hirsuta instead of crenata. That's a bit more robust and about the same kind of thing. Carpeting plants are tough. The only really good ones I've seen all seem to have blasto light levels so if you're ok for algae you could try boosting the light. Carpeting plants live at the very bottom of the tank, so are furthest away from the light source most of the time.
 
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