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Odd question : How do I SLOW down plant growth

M

Mortis

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17 Jun 2009
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Probably the equivalent of "First world problems" in the aquarium hobby but, hey.

Im really lazy when it comes to tank maintenance which is why I often have to deal with BBA but at the same time time I am "cursed" with very rapid, healthy plant growth, especially when it comes to stem plants and ideally have to trim them every week. My tank setups are all long term so even rhizome plants kind of take over larger areas than I want them to. I stopped using moss in my setups some time ago because they would just get out of hand and trimming the moss would just lead to some of it spreading to other parts of the tank. The only moss in my tank is Fissidens which is the first "exotic" plant I got in the hobby way back in 2006 and has somehow ended up as a hitchhiker in every tank of mine since.

This thread is mainly to discuss what the "safest" method would be to slow down plant growth in a high tech tank in a balanced manner.

1) You can only reduce lighting so much before growth on high light demanding plants or plants dont colour up as much. Personally I have tried reducing my lighting intensity from high to medium and also reducing the photoperiod by an hour and it didnt make an appreciable difference

2) Ferts : All of last year, I used Tropica Specialised instead of my usual EI dosing without it slowing down growth. My substrate is several years old at this point so its unlikely to be a major factor

3) CO2 : This also has a lower limit below which you get poor quality growth rather than slower growth

I dont think fine tuning any of these elements is worthwhile as it just increases the micromanagement that you have to do rather than just enjoying the tank. Also, playing around in the lower ranges just makes the risk of things going wrong higher.

The last option to slow down growth is temperature. I have heard that lower temps do help in slower, healthier, more colourful growth. In my case, my tanks are always in the 22-26 *C range because I live in a tropical country and my aquarium is in my bedroom which is air conditioned at night. So as such I dont think I can go lower than this nor would it be good for the typical livestock that we keep in our aquariums.

Just wondering what thoughts our forum experts might have on this topic.
 
you can't win

light is the accelerator pedal, if you limit ferts or co2, the plants will grow according to the law of minimums, so they will grow as healthy as they can taking the limiting factor into account.

have you tried leaving your lights at the high intensity and cutting down to 5-6 hours?

aquatic plants are underwater weeds, if they get what they need, it is hard to keep up with the trimming, if you limit anything they will not grow as well, lose colour etc. and attract algae..
 
I think the only realistic way to reduce plant maintenance & pruning would be to grow only the species that naturally have very slow growth rates - most of which really won’t appreciate intense lighting.

In other words, no high tech & none of the plants that do so well given high tech.

There are enough very attractive cultivars of Anubias now, with variegation & different shades of green that I expect a beautiful scape could be done featuring only Anubias & they’d need next to no pruning or anything else compared to other plants.

Or a combination of Anubias & ferns like the many cultivars of Leptochilus & Bolbitis.
 
I ran an experiment for about half a year. I reduced CO2 injection to about 10 ppm CO2 24/7 and very stable with horizontal reactor in overflow mode, 100 PAR and 50% EI Ferts. Temperatures a was lightly high in subtropical HK, not advantageous, in the 26-29 C range.

Growth reduced, depending on plant but on average 50% reduced compared to ideal high tech conditions.

Although this is only one tank, and can not claim a to be a scientific experiment, it suggest that when we keep light relatively high and reduce CO2 to much lower levels than usually advised, we may keep the tank with an high-tech appearance, but slowed down growth and much less CO2 consumption..

1744239333085.png

And after reshape with lots of uprooting and disturbing the soil:

1744239368139.png
 
Interesting that the Green Aqua shop and gallery use reduced CO2 (I think) have their own EI fertilisers for sale but do not use them because they want steady growth and using EI in the gallery would have hard to manage plant growth, they use the ADA range ,mainly rich substrate and lean column dosing. I think Balazs explains this in a you tube video on fertilisers. Of course ADA are expensive but the principle of high energy lean column dosing could be scaled down for cheaper options
However many plants like Hygrophilla probably won't play along with this so it's a case of choose the right plants
 
I thought as much when I posted this thread that there wouldnt be a "safe" way to slow down growth in a high tech setup while still keeping the plants healthy.

The low tech option is definitely tempting but I guess it would be less challenging and there's no fun in that, for me atleast, But then I did manage to cure myself of new plant "collectoritis" so maybe theres still hope. If I had a larger tank I would definitely choose the low tech option with just a little CO2 and a splash of ferts once a week.

CO2 : I do agree with what people have mentioned about CO2. There was a time period when I tried just blasting the tank with CO2 a little below the threshold that fish can comfortably tolerate, because I was dealing with BBA as usual and my logic was that if people are claiming that CO2 fluctuations are the main cause of BBA, lets see what happens when plants have more than enough CO2. I did compensate by adding a little more ferts and increasing my light intensity. The problem that I have noticed with high CO2 levels seems to be that all the stem plants became leggy with longer internodes. I observed the same thing later on in another tank with different plants. Higher levels of CO2 tend to make the stems longer which is why Im happy with medium levels of CO2 and its probably why Green Aqua does so as well.

Aqua360 said:
As an aside, if you have any spare fissidens, i'd be happy to take some off your hands!
Click to expand...
I dont live in the UK unfortunately otherwise I would have shared some !! I had gone to an aquarium meet when I lived in the UK to attend uni way back in 07-09. Met a few cool chaps who were very generous in sharing cuttings and stuff. Then again I got my original fissidens shipped from Singapore to Mumbai and it was stuck in customs for a month. I had dried out completely but was still green so I chucked it in my tank and here we are 20 years later with the same batch of fissidens still thriving in my 4th or 5th setup since then !! Maybe it would actually survive being posted.
 
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