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Vallisneria Problem (Kinda- Overgrowth)

15K views 22 replies 7 participants last post by  1077 
#1 ·
I sorta have a different kinda plant issue here since I lowered my lights down in the 55g my Vallisneria are TAKING OVER.

I don't mean grow well I really MEAN TAKING OVER they're just cutting short of being 4ft long now :shock: and not just one type Vallis neither its all of them (Corkscrew, Spiralis, Leopard).

They already cover half my surface entirely at this point so I actually took the frogbit out so the plants below get SOME light at least but these Vallis do not seem to stop growing.....

I don't think I can trim them like you would with a stem plant but I have to do something before they fully invade my tank here anyone had that problem before???:-?

PS the Amazon Swords seem to be in overdrive with daughter plants as well but at least these I can take off/ out so that's less an issue others then running out of floor space in my tanks.
 
#3 ·
But not being stem plants that'll kill each leaf doing so from the top down then :-( I don't wanna do that neither.....
 
#5 ·
Well its like any house or outdoors plant if you take a given leaf and cop it in half what happens? The rest leaf die's off too.

I actually like the 4xl look but in its spot its sorta unfortunate right now - I am thinking tank remodeling ahead of me :)

Why don't you like your's because of the looks? I love any type Vallis just send them my way then i'll find them a new good home :)
 
#6 ·
My one Anubias has half a leaf and it's not dying. My Rubin sword has a leaf that is ripped to wear it is barely attached to the rest of the leaf and it's not dying.

My Vals are a mess. Browning stalks and I have them planted so think it's real tough to get in under them and around them at substrate level to get the dead stuff laying down there. It's bugging me.
 
#7 ·
Take your val's out of the tank cut off all outer leaves that are yellow/ brown; even if you only have 2-3 leaves in the center left then and space them apart in your tank.
Dim question (I'm sure you do but wanna double check) I know you have the special substrate there but you also use flourish as a liquid fert (which is what the val's would feed off) right?

I'm always happy when I have a question and it turns into a thread over something totally else and I'm still sitting here with my question LMAO but at least i can (maybe) help you before your plants wind up in the bin.
 
#8 ·
I didn't mention "my problem" to change your subject. I mentioned it because as you can see, I have "half ripped/cut leaves and they aren't dying. Hence why I thought you could cut your Vals. Ok I added a little extra about mess around the bottom. FORGIVE ME!
I forgot I'm not one of a handful that are the "Holy Grail" of answers.
 
#10 ·
:| had you missed the last part of my post? I thought you knew me better then that by now.
Thanks for the article;-)



I'm always happy when I have a question and it turns into a thread over something totally else and I'm still sitting here with my question LMAO but at least i can (maybe) help you before your plants wind up in the bin.
 
#9 ·
found this in a google search. it's relevant

Most rosette plants cannot be “pruned” like a stem plant. With Vallisneria and Sagittaria, some people trim the ends of the leaves if they lay across the water surface and block light. The disadvantage of this method of trimming is that the damaged end of the leaf often begins to rot. Eventually, the whole leaf will die back. The best answer is to use those species that will not outgrow the height of the tank they are kept in. Alternatively, it is preferable to remove the longer outside leaves while allowing the shorter, young inner leaves to grow rather than to damage the leaves by shortening them.
Vallisneria, Sagittaria, Cryptocoryne and some Echinodorus species spread by runner, just below the surface of the substrate. A healthy bed of Vallisneria will need regular thinning or it will begin to take over the tank. Large, older plants can be thinned from the middle of the bed by feeling around them to find the attached runners and severing them as you slowly work the plant out of the group. Removing young plants from edges of the stand is easier. These can just be pulled up — roots, runners and all — and pinched from the parent stand at any convenient point.
 
#11 ·
I just cut the tops off like you would grass in the yard. Depending on how new the leaf is, it may continue to grow. If it's a mature leaf, the end will start to rot. I don't view this as a bad thing however since your goal really is to thin the plants out. It won't kill the plant.

Even this however will not stop them. I usually pull up a bunch of them and resell them back to the LFS when I get at least 5-10 plants. Because of the runners. they end up all over the place. I'll also replant them back into the section where I want them.
 
#14 ·
After having been here almost 1 year now I'm done dozering and I don't really wanna pull out the weed eater on it neither.....I'll see what I can do remodeling their home, take some plants out, move some around etc ...I just don't wanna cut it up to to make it rot :-(
 
#15 · (Edited)
If you cut the ends at about the surface, the ends will start to rot, but it usually takes about 6-8 weeks that to affect the entire leaf. In the mean time, the plant will continue to grow news leafs and new plants via runners until the main plant reaches maturity. Then all the leaves will fall off the main root ball. But by then you'll have tons of new plants from all the runners.

If you want your tank to maintain a certain look, you'll have to pull up the extra Vals of else your entire tank will become nothing but Vals. If you look at my aquarium pics you'll see pictures of the tank about 1 year apart. The latest pics show how big the Java fern got in the front middle of the tank. Look at the Vals in that pic. You can see how much they had spread to the left-side of the tank. And that was after I removed some.

Happy pruning.
 
#16 ·
Not long ago while researching plants that I am contemplating for a planted tank come spring, I read an interesting (to me) ,,,article about vallesneria and it's possible effects on ph in tanks where it was allowed to grow unchecked. I can't remember the scientific name for the process by which this particular plant can absorb it's carbon from carbonate content of the water, but in tanks overgrown with this plant and already low ph values,,it was suggested that it could lower the pH even further and thus,,make pH unstable.
It all sounded plausible to me but I'm not all that expierienced with plants in general ,and am wondering if anyone else has thoughts or expieriences with this regard. I mean to me,,, in a small tank ,with already low pH values or KH ,and left to become overgrown with the stuff,, does anyone think this could pose a problem with either biological filter considering that at lower pH values the bacteria develops much more slowly,,or with fishes depending on what one is trying to keep?
Or could it be person ,or persons unknown ,over analyzing the effects of a tank heavily planted with this particular plant?
 
#19 ·
Not long ago while researching plants that I am contemplating for a planted tank come spring, I read an interesting (to me) ,,,article about vallesneria and it's possible effects on ph in tanks where it was allowed to grow unchecked. I can't remember the scientific name for the process by which this particular plant can absorb it's carbon from carbonate content of the water, but in tanks overgrown with this plant and already low ph values,,it was suggested that it could lower the pH even further and thus,,make pH unstable.
It all sounded plausible to me but I'm not all that expierienced with plants in general ,and am wondering if anyone else has thoughts or expieriences with this regard. I mean to me,,, in a small tank ,with already low pH values or KH ,and left to become overgrown with the stuff,, does anyone think this could pose a problem with either biological filter considering that at lower pH values the bacteria develops much more slowly,,or with fishes depending on what one is trying to keep?
Or could it be person ,or persons unknown ,over analyzing the effects of a tank heavily planted with this particular plant?
I can't recall coming across this directly, but it is logical thinking and I suspect true, though perhaps not at significant levels.

Vallisneria is one of several plants that are very efficient at assimilating carbon from bicarbonates in the water rather than CO2. Some of the others common in aquaria are Egeria, Elodea, Myriophyllum, and several others less common. In general, plants like these come from harder more alkaline waters because those waters contain more bicarbonates that soft acidic waters. It has been my experience that Vallisneria grow very well in basic/alkaline water, but much less well in soft acidic water; I actually use Sagittaria rather than Vallisneria for the same "appearance" in my soft acidic water Amazonian tanks for just this reason. Some of these plants, though not Vallisneria and Myriophyllum, polarize their leaves in order to use the bicarbonate carbon by converting it to CO2 and then assimilating it through the leaf.

To digress a bit momentarily, opposite to the above are the many amphibious plants (bog plants like Echinodorus and Cryptocoryne) along with Ceratopteris, Ludwigia, Nuphar, etc. that cannot use bicarbonates well and rely more on CO2 either from the water (when submersed) or the air (emersed or with floating leaves). And some, namely the aquatic mosses and liverworts, apparently cannot use bicarbonates at all.

It seems logical that if the plant like Vallisneria is assimilating carbon from bicarbonates, then the pH will slowly fall as the buffering effect of the bicarbonates is used up or at least reduced. However, I would wonder just how much this would or could occur.

The other aspect is the "low pH" you mention. If the pH is already low, and here I would assume down around 6 or below, the nitrification bacteria are probably non-functioning anyway. It is my understanding that at a pH below 6.4 nitrosomonas bacteria cannot multiply, and below 6 it ceases to function. The further lowering of the pH would thus not be a concern with respect to the biological filtration, almost non-existent, but with the acidification of the water and the effect of that on the fish and plants. However, in a properly designed aquarium, this should never arise as a problem. With soft acidic water fish, a pH of 5 and zero hardness is fine; if the fish require harder water (livebearers, rift lake cichlids, etc) then the aquarium must be set up to provide harder water.
 
#17 ·
@WisFish Yea I re-direct them and/ or take some out as we're going along here to get the look I want.

@1077 I always had quite a decent amount Vallis in any set up small or larger and I had that with my old tanks (harder water, higher pH) as well as my new set ups here (1dKH from tap and low pH). Even in the old tanks that had pretty much Vallis planting only I hadn't had a pH drop (over time) at least not in a way that it would have been measurable with the normal liquid kits. For the new set ups now they been up & running with my soft water since Nov last year and after the initial set up also here KH & pH are stable. I can't tell you from my own exp wether or not this articles suggestions are right/ wrong. I pers never seen it happen; but it may well be my tanks had missed a piece of the puzzle in the set up that would 'trigger' such thing to happen.
 
#20 ·
Did I understand you right Byron? That Vallis grows worst in soft water then hard water? Because my exp is the complete opposite, while they grew nicely before for me with the harder set ups, now here in the new soft water home that are REALLY exploding.

How far do you think over what time frame would it lower the parameters? I'd have to find my notes but this tank was set up early Nov last year and after the initial cycle this tank has been pH 7.6 and KH5 since then (with a tap water of KH1 and pH 6.8 )
 
#21 ·
Did I understand you right Byron? That Vallis grows worst in soft water then hard water? Because my exp is the complete opposite, while they grew nicely before for me with the harder set ups, now here in the new soft water home that are REALLY exploding.

How far do you think over what time frame would it lower the parameters? I'd have to find my notes but this tank was set up early Nov last year and after the initial cycle this tank has been pH 7.6 and KH5 since then (with a tap water of KH1 and pH 6.8 )
I know of others locally (Vancouver) who say they have success with Vallisneria in our soft water, but years ago I found it grew much better in my livebearer tank than in my Amazon tank. In the alkaline tank it was deep green, lush, runners all over; not in the other. Just my experience.

I've no data on the effect on pH, it is only a surmise. As I mentioned, I suspect it would be insignificant. If Lee can find the article I would be interested in reading it. Diana Walstad has several references in her book to articles on photosynthetic carbon assimilation, but all I found online were abstracts and I've not had time to try and locate the periodicals and thesis through libraries.
 
#23 ·
Wish I could find the article.:| Do recall it was while searching planted tank forums and article was translated from german to english. As mentioned,, It was suggested that the aquarium would have to be near choked with this particular plant to present the scenario described.
I recall I was searching for some fast growing plants that would do well in my water (moderatley hard) ,, and that also do well with moderate light. Things kinda took off from there ,as so often they do while I am researching:roll:.
I shall note the place should I once again find it.
 
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