Are Your Aquarium Plants Lacking Nutrients or Light? (and other questions)
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- Äas pĆidĂĄn 25. 07. 2024
- I answer your burning questions about plant nutrient deficiencies, algae, and more!
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#girltalksfish #nanofish #plantedaquarium
0:00 Frequently asked questions about aquarium plants
0:27 How to get rid of green hair algae
1:32 How to convert plants from emersed to submersed growth without CO2
3:18 Are my plants lacking nutrients or light?
5:10 How to get rid of brown diatom algae
6:36 What to do with excess floating plants
7:35 What was the first plant you kept alive?
*Thanks for all your plant questions! What's the next topic you'd like me to do a Q&A on?*
How do you grow plant carpets without CO2? What are some good fish for a 34 gallon? (130 litres) Does Fluval stratum leach ammonia, nitrate, or nitrite into the tank?
maybe questions about common loaches?
Hi have you seen any aggressive behaviour from algae eaters?
I had 2 Amano shrimp deaths in tanks where I added sae.. But since there was a betta in it he could have been the culprit... My confusion is because I had a tank with 2 Amano dying on me with only sae around but I chalked it up to water quality problems.... I just added some cherry shrimp to my betta tank sans the sae... Hopefully I haven't just gotten expensive live food
Sleep
Diy light plss
I've found that adding a pothos day 1 to a new tank really helps with algae, amazing nutrients sink!
or try hornworth for nutrient removal
I've never owned fish, have zero interest in aquariums, but for some reason this video was really interesting. Good stuff.
Plant care/pillow talk. Way to take it to the next level.âđ
When I'm ready to get rid of excess plants and have no use for them, I put them in a pitcher I use for water changes. Dry...no water in it, and let them dry out and die before throwing them away. Safe and easy peasy! đâ
This QnA video is awesome. Keep up the good work and I do look forward to part 2!
Your content n delivery is superb! Keep up the great work as your sincerity n no nonsense approach is refreshing! You got a new subscriber for that reason! Good on you!
What a fun video! I liked the hiking while you answered questions đ
I also love anubias (and crypts)! I keep my light pretty low on Cosmo's tank to help keep the algae down, but all of them are doing great!
I love your videos like this!
I live in Arvada and I found out from your fish stores near you video recently that we live near each other. I found a new fish store near me - Exotic Aquatics- because you told us about it. I had no idea it was there!! I love it!!
Exotic Aquatics has a great selection of stock in large well-maintained tanks, itâs very clean and the store even sells my favorite hard to find fish food too!
Because you talked about selling your platies to them, I asked them if they would be interested in some of my mystery snails. Iâve had a hard time selling my snails because they are so fun and cute and I love taking care of them! Unfortunately, Iâve let my snails get too big for my tank. A 30 gallon tank filled with 200 mystery snails is a heavy bioload!!! I cannot keep every. single. snail. đ It was easy to sell them to Exotic Aquatics, though, because they are a great store.
Thanks for all of your tips! I learn so much from you! I appreciate your style. â€ïž
Thanks for all the answers to plant questions.
Helpful video! Just wanted to share a tip I learned from Prime time Aquatics and The Small Scape. They use garden watering cans for tank top offs. So much easier than using buckets for topping off tanks. It was a game changer for me. Seeing you use buckets and jugs to top off in this video made me think of it.
So glad I was scrolling through the comments lol. That's GENIUS I always spill water on the floor
Loved this! Keep it up. I love your videos!
The type of mineral in any rocks put in the aquarium matters for diatoms. Any rocks or gravel with silica tends to encourage growth. I had a stable shrimp and snail tank and added some angular granitic stones for visual effect and baby shrimp refuge and immediately had a bloom of diatoms. Eventually it settled down with out any effort from me.
You just explained what happened in one of my tanks
Always love your videos. What do you recommend for top floating plants?
For the bright light issue, look around your house for some translucent plastics (think somewhere between milk carton and clear plastics), suppose you could use bubble wrap if nothing else.
For the extra plants, put them in your ramen or on top of your Tai food.
I feel so honored to be early. First of all, you eating ramen from the pot both scared me and changed my life :0 all the info in this video was amazing by the way. So many good questions with so many great answers.
Wysteria was my first plant years ago and unbeknownst to me I had bought them emersed and thought it was really weird that it looked like a totally different plant over time.
This is awesome! I have a well established tank...like 4 years in it's current state and suddenly, with same lights, same plants, yada yada I get massive mega fast growing hair algae. Ugh! Thanks for the advice!
Great video! I hope you enjoyed your day off!
Thank you for anothe rgreat video. And I hope you have a happy and amazing 4th!
She is more helpful than 90% of fish youtubers đŻ
Thanks for sharing your day.
That was my big question about floating plants. How much is too much? IÂŽm still new in the aquarium hobby and doing alot of research about fish and plants and so on. I heard it was good to have floating pants, so i bought about 4 1-2 grow cups of frogbit and then learn that they can get "too much". I trim mine, when the roots get long. I have a 65gallon (240L) and they cover about half my tank now. Sometimes i wonder if my other plants get enough of the fertiliser. CanÂŽt see any signs of them lacking, but itÂŽs definitely something that is on my mind.
What are the little bugs jumping around on the floating plants? Are they harmful?
We love R&R! We've been living in Colorado Springs for about 9 years and it's always been our go-to local restaurant đ
There's an R&R in the Springs?
Next visit I will need to find, thank you!
@@Lazy_Fish_Keeper Well I believe there's two, but the one we go to is in Black Forest :)
Great info, unique presentation. :-D
Aquarium plants rock my world đż
I remember in one of your past videos you had your plants in little plastic Tupperware containers in your tank, and Iâm wondering how well they did like that?
Thank you for this video
Love the channel keep it up
Love this! đ„°
Oddly enough frogbit is the only thing that hasn't spread well in my tanks, I don't know if it's my hard well water or if it's lacking something ells. Duckweed seems to just thrive in my tanks thou and I keep thinning it out in case it's choking out the frogbit but it doesn't seem to be helping much.
Would like to know what to do with an aponogeton bulb after it dies back. Not much info out there about how to plant them either.
Currently struggling with red rot floaters :/ I think my flow was a problem so now i moved most of them to a hopefuly less flowy tank
when my lights were too strong, if you have a lid, place a piece of paper, and layer as much as you like on the lid to dim! :)
Hi! I love your videos and everything you do on your channel! Btw what church do you go too?
This was great! Loved the differentness of it, hiking and relaxation combined with fish tips!đđŸ
Loved this video style Irene! You mentioned diatoms .. Iâm in that boat with the 6 week old tank I have. Any suggestions? Wait it out? Keep cleaning it off until it disappears for good? I have some plants I want to put it but Iâm afraid it will take them over!
I have found being careful about light level helps. I lowered my light intensity and I use the Walstad method of a 4 hour light on session followed by a break and then another light session. Plus, I try to get as may plants in the tank growing too as I can.
Nerite snails eat that type of algae too. Try are hardworking awesome snails butâŠbutâŠthey have one drawback that I have found. If you get a female, she will lay eggs everywhere but those eggs never will hatch because they need to be in brackish water. The advice I have often heard is to buy a snail from a store that will let you return it if it turns out to be female. You might have to try a few snails to get a male but this is what I will do if I buy another nerite snail. They are worth it though, in my opinion.
@@elly7199 thank you so much!! I will give the Walstad method a go. Iâve heard Nerite snail suggestions a lot & while Iâm not opposed I hate the idea of eggs everywhere! I will probably try as you suggested & try to get a male. Question, do I need to quarantine the snail as I would other fish? Thanks again for your help!
Iâm not sure about the quarantining the nerite snail part.
For me personally, at this point in my learning curve I would. Nothing big. What I do is put a snail in a small bowl in water from the tank it will be going into for a bit. I wait until it is moving around so any debris from previous tank comes free from it. Then, I rinse it and put it in my tank.
If anyone has any advice on this matter, I would love to know!
@@Freshwaterfish_foliage I love the Walstad method!!!
I have a Blackbeard algae problem in my African rainforest biotope tank. Iâve tried chemical removal twice but it came back. What do I do? Help!
Ooh, here's a question. How does one optimize for growing the largest amount of moss in the least amount of time? Can java moss growth be sped up?
I've had luck growing java moss on plastic floating "Betta" plants (look like square plant mat). The java moss is close to the light and grows like crazy in my 10 & 20 gallon tanks.
I have so much of it now I've moved several clumps of it to my new 40 gallon. The shrimp love it! Frogbit growing as well.
@@pkendlers hey thanks. Great đĄ my frogbit and salvinia are doing so well, I'm afraid they'll go terrestrial and outcompete my tomatoes đ
@@CatFish107 Good luck with your tomatoes! Crazy weather this year for outdoor planting.
One way you can convert plants into their aquatic form without CO2 is if you already have an air stone or sponge filter. believe it or not carbon dioxide still gets in through it. And I vouch for this because I have pothos and I completely submerged them and I can see their water roots forming in and taking aquatic form with out melting back. Plus if you have real sensitive fish species terrestrial plants are better đ they keep nitrates down to 5 ppm ! đȘđœ
One way to get rid of plant cuttings and floating plants is to feed them to plant eating fish in a separate, plant less tank, with silver dollars, Buenos Aires tetras, or goldfish. Another excellent way is to set up a dedicated crayfish tank, as crayfish are the dominant macrophyte consumers in most freshwater ecosystems.
Hey Irene didi you know that not all dwarf gouramis are semi aggressive the regular and powder blues are friendly. And flame gouramis can happily stay with fish that are super bright colored fish just like them.
I have had some of the worst time with plants. I use fertilizer but until recently i haven't even had algae. Now that I have algae my plants are growing. Could I be doing to many water changes? I usually do them once or twice a week. I like to use old aquarium water on my plants, so I didn't really see a big down side to it since I need to use the water anyway. I quit even trying to grow anubias in my cichlid tank. The leaves would turn yellow and holey then fall off. That tank has a high bio-load that's one reason I do so many water changes. Plus I'm constantly misjudging how much food to give so I have to vacuum it out. These fish act like a school of piranha when hungry, which is all the time. The cichlids jump out of the water for food. I never know how much to feed them. Does everyone feed them till they stop? I know they should finish it within 30 seconds? I hope that's the right amount of time. Mine clear the food in about 15 seconds so I feed over and over till they are done. Unfortunately they are starving then they are completely full, no in-between. Am I the only one with this problem? I am moving these guys outside to a stock tank pond, just so I can clean it better, and it's closer to the plants I want to water. Win-Win for me.
A lot of great tips! I learned a lot here! Thank you! Plus, the area that you were hiking in is beautiful!!
I love Irene sheâs so wholesome
How do you keep moss rooted in place? All of mine came loose from the steel mesh and logs it came tied to and melted away. ^^;
I used fishing line, but if that doesn't work, I've also used super glue. Aquarium Coop has some videos on gluing plants.
Speaking of planted tanks, I plan on getting some glass shrimps for my Charlieâs Angels tank which has three angels in them but I am worried of any possible diseases that the shrimps might be carrying. Do you have any advice for how to quarantine shrimps? Im worried for both the shrimps and my fish since I know methylene blue can kill shrimps.
shrimps rarely carry any diseases to fish, so iâd say itâs more important that your angels are good and healthy (strong immune system makes them less vulnerable to catching any diseases in general). the methylene blue will get diluted out with each water change, but it would be good to wait a while before adding the shrimp, and make sure you do the proper acclimation since theyâre more sensitive too.
amano shrimp might be a better alternative to glass shrimp imo, since you can buy them bigger, which means they have a higher chance of survival with your angels (they tend to like picking on smaller fish/shrimp, make sure thereâs a good amount of plant cover). amano are better algae eaters anyway, so theyâd do great in a planted tank.
New to the hobby and fighting the hair algae, gonna try your decrease intensity. Currently using the NiCrew LEDs at Max 80% ramping up and down on a 6hr schedule
A thin bottle brush will be your best friend. My tanks are fairly balanced, but even still, I'll get the occasional hair hiding in the roots of my frogbit.
Trick is to remove as much of it as possible manually, and then amano shrimp are the kings of cleaning up algae if you're fine with adding them.
I have personally found Cory's recommendations for leaving the tank alone to find homeostasis to be the most effective and least stressful.
If you are not using CO2 (I don't use any high tech, and use a shop light for my aquariums), look at Dr Diana Walstad's Treatise on the Planted Aquarium for information on how plants (and algae) utilize CO2 and photosynthesis.
I have lights come on in the morning to wake me up, turn off after 4 hours for the Walstad Plant Siesta, then back on for 5 hours in the evening.
Side effect?
Almost no algae and better plant growth.
Amano shrimp will keep hair algae in check and they hide so you will rarely see them. I scrape the hair algae off the glass top and add it to the tank. I only have 3 Amano shrimp in a 10G and they gobble it up overnight.
Yay for living in a climate where my floaters cannot survive the low Temps in winter. Water hyacinth is an annual here!
Also, some new friends showed up in my patio pond, having hitched a ride on the water lily. Pond đ, swimming on their backs, laying huge amounts of eggs, and nearly eliminating the duckweed. I love my new little friends.
I'm thinking on getting a 20 gallon regular tank. Would it be okay if I have serpae tetras and kuhli loaches in it?
Yep, I have a 20 gallon with a similar stock load. I have 3 loaches and 7 serpae tetras. Good luck.
@@Xenda That's good news! I love them both and really want to make sure they can live together comfortably
Whoa, hold on a minute! Salifert has a new freshwater potassium test kit? I think that deserves its own video! Does anyone know the range of the test?
Great audio
Is this pre aquarium co-op??
OKAY! So I've got a goodie. Why do floating plants' leaves (I have frogbit and water lettuce) start to turn under the water and end up dying? The water lettuce is so difficult to keep from getting wet
Part of the natural life cycle as new leaves come up from the center.
I keep snails to eat the leaves as soon as they begin to melt
when you buy plants online and they've been in the bag to long and they start dying and melting when you put them in the tank. what's the best way to save them????
Leave them alone so they can establish, and cut off dying leaves once you see new growth.
Patience, and a few "pest snails" to eat the melting leaves until new growth is established.
My fish store tells me I have low light. They sold me the tank, lights etc. So I have hair algae, huge crops of multiple types of snails. How much lower can my light get. I have java ferns which are struggling under my care. I do add fertilizer according to instructions. But I have 2 over the side filters are they too much. I do a 25% change mid week and a full 50% on the weekend. What do I do next? The snails are very happy as is the hair algae but I'm losing hair over this along with plant growth. Poor plants. Suggestions or things to look into would be gratefully accepted. Thank you for sharing. I find your channel very helpful.
Itâs not just about being low light but exposure time and how close plants are to the light. The par of the light goes down the deeper in the tank things are. For example if I have my anubias mid to high level in my tank they get algae even though I have low light but if I lower them then they donât get algae because that light is just a smidge weaker. Certain plants can grow without even getting direct light, anubias, ferns, crypts, moss, aponogeton, they donât really need your tank light, theyâd be fine if you just left the light on in the room. My guess is thereâs mulm build up in the moss and itâs too close to the light, since it grows slowly algae is gonna suck up the extra bleh that is getting caught in the moss.
@purple bunny the plants can only utilize the nutrients as long as they have CO2. According to Dr Diana Walstad, the plants maximize the use of CO2 in the first 4 hours the lights are on, and then the algae starts growing.
The key seems to be to limit the lights to 4 hour chunks, then lights out for 3 to 4 hours.
I have already seen an increase in growth and decrease in algae.
Finally, swords are notorious heavy feeders. They typically exhaust a root tab every 6 weeks when small, every 4 weeks at medium size, and 2 root tabs every 4 weeks for large swords.
Hope that helps!
@@Lazy_Fish_Keeper Yes very much so. Thank you also for the moral support. Glad to know about the swords. I've had one of them but it outgrew my tank in about 4 weeks. I am getting read to combine 2 tanks worth of fish and plants. That should give the algae a run for it's money. Still struggling with the timers. It's Saturday another trip to the hardware store coming up. Plants are tricky but oh so nice once it all comes together. Thank you again
@@Lazy_Fish_Keeper Yes I read her book too. Just ordered my own copy. The library wants theirs back regularly. And just last night I FINALLY figured how to make the timers work. Along with the other things I am doing the algae should ease up soon. Thank you for all the tips with this. I will update you in a month or 2.
@@purplebunny7728 as Cory says, patience is the aquarists most overlooked tool!
Hard relate on the timers, took me a few weeks to figure mine out, and after a year I want to replace them all with the Co-op version... until I watch a livestream and he talks about having to reprogram after a power outageđ
I promise it gets easier. Being 'a lazy aquarist' as far as plants go allows the tank to establish homeostasis, unless you are going for an IAPLC competition. Otherwise, I just let algae and plants find how to balance out on their own, and keep enough snails to eat back melted leaves so I don't have to trim.
Feed empty tanks a flake food to keep the beneficial bacteria and plants thriving, and learn cool tricks like Walstad's siesta, and I am able to fully enjoy all my tanks.đđđ
wow amazing video
I donât do well with slow growers like Anubius
Can you recommend a good algae eater for a 5g betta planted tank?
Otocinclus
Nerite snail.
Cherry shrimp
Otto's do better in larger tanks and cherry shrimp are more grazers. I'd say a nerite snail and an amano shrimp or two.
@@finley6161 5g might be a bit small for Amanos, no? I'd opt for nerite and cherry shrimp
@@MultiRainday i love otosđ„șâ€ïž
Wow I found your channel this morning and Iâm so happy because we đđœ are đđœ the đđœ same đđœ
I have a pond so that I find is the best outlet
Great
7:48 are you a LEGO fan too
Not related but I would just like to share that my Betta for some reason changes(not exactly changing) its colour when I shine light on another direction, not sure why but when the light is on top of the Betta fish, it's colour is blue but when I shine light directly at its side it's colour becomes turquoise which is really interesting for me,does anybody's Betta do that?
Do they happen to have a black colored head from all angles (nonmetallic)? That seems to be another typical trait with the common metallic turquoise bettas... for some reason.
My grass is turning brown? My Java fern dried out before I could plant it and the leaves have brown splotches? My microsword is dissolving? My Indian water sprite keeps uprooting/splitting offâŠ
Grass probably needs a bit more light and root tabs maybe, ferns often get brown spots, in fact some just naturally have them but if they become pinholes then thatâs usually potassium deficiency which is common with ferns. Dissolving sword tells me there might be a nitrogen deficiency, feed it some root tabs
Where did you get that shirt!??!?
Girllll did you eat directly out of the pan lmao Iâve never seen someone do that đđ
Hi I am your first like view love â€ïžyour videos
This was a very enjoyable video to watch.
I see your Tee Turtle shirt :)
Green hair algae is so easy to get rid of, just buy some amano shrimp and you will never see it again.
Me with a 27 watt bulb in a 60 gallon
I have giant gaurami and pearlspot that decimate any floating plants I put in their tank(which BTW is about 10000 litres x4.. So basically made myself a sump and an aquaponics tray... I'll load it up on my INSTA if anyone's interested
My leaves are transparent đ
lunch... with noodle.. =.=
IRENE!
You still not injecting CO2?
Eating ramen from the pot, that's my gangsta!
To me it's not worth to spend hundreds of dollars diagnosing what's wrong with your plants. I let drago handle it.
When I tune in to "Girl Talks Fish" I expect fish talk. Not church lady hikes, cooking ramen, or taking naps. Being told to expect a topic and getting non-related content that is really just blather is the quickest way to lose me as a subscriber. I normally really enjoy your Fish Talk. Please keep to that.
Well you probably arenât wanted here then with such a sour attitude. Believe it or not but normal human beings like to get to know people and this also extends to youtubers that they follow. Itâs not about you being a Karen coming at Irene with the âIâll take my business elsewhereâ bs, sheâs just sharing a bit about herself and her life. Youâre just a bad person.
This video was really hard to get through. Had to skip all the bs about hiking or eating food. Please just stick to the subject.
âMy husband gave me the day offâ Just lost total respect for you. Bye.
Thank you as always for the thoughtful content and presentation. Much appreciated. FYI 404 URL link error to Potassium test kit... fix is to end it in "... -test-kit/" vs "... test-kit.aspx"
Hi, we have sent you a message on instagram.