AverageWhiteBloke
Member
Wondering how people deal with "easy" stem plants when they start ditching lower leaves? My understanding of this is it's a combination of lighting and co2, maybe to a certain extent flow as well. Do people just cut the healthy tops of and re-plant accepting this will happen and just keep the plant more compact?
In a high tech tank the norm would be to make sure you were getting good flow and co2 down to substrate level, the highish lighting would also be a given unless other plants were shading. I suppose soil substrates would also come into play as organics were getting broken down in the substrate releasing co2 from the bottom up but unfortunately as mine wasn't a planned tank more of an ad-hoc scenario I'm using cat litter. It does have some cec capacity and I don't tend to hoover it, I also like to dose the substrate to keep it as nutrient rich as possible.
The question is, my light is lowish although my crypts, beuce and ferns show good growth, I even have a sword that sends a new leaf up every week (albeit a bit glassy and transparent) My floaters are off the chart if I may say so myself so I can pretty much rule nutrients out the equation. Regarding co2, it is what it is I suppose, at best I could hit equilibrium so I aim best surface agitation I can with a filter that is too small for this tank. If I was to try and address getting more light down to the substrate surely that is only going to increase the demands of all the other plants and leave even less co2 in general?
Other than that I don't think there's much else I can adjust, would be interested to hear people's opinions and how they maximise co2 for stems in low techs. Like the post says, it's a fine line when dealing with stems.
In a high tech tank the norm would be to make sure you were getting good flow and co2 down to substrate level, the highish lighting would also be a given unless other plants were shading. I suppose soil substrates would also come into play as organics were getting broken down in the substrate releasing co2 from the bottom up but unfortunately as mine wasn't a planned tank more of an ad-hoc scenario I'm using cat litter. It does have some cec capacity and I don't tend to hoover it, I also like to dose the substrate to keep it as nutrient rich as possible.
The question is, my light is lowish although my crypts, beuce and ferns show good growth, I even have a sword that sends a new leaf up every week (albeit a bit glassy and transparent) My floaters are off the chart if I may say so myself so I can pretty much rule nutrients out the equation. Regarding co2, it is what it is I suppose, at best I could hit equilibrium so I aim best surface agitation I can with a filter that is too small for this tank. If I was to try and address getting more light down to the substrate surely that is only going to increase the demands of all the other plants and leave even less co2 in general?
Other than that I don't think there's much else I can adjust, would be interested to hear people's opinions and how they maximise co2 for stems in low techs. Like the post says, it's a fine line when dealing with stems.