BN Ancistrus eating my swords?

[kwc1974]

Yes, but still the underlying problem is that you are not fertilizing enough. Only then do BNs start in on the swords. You have to strengthen the plants to resist the BNs.

Swords have a tendancy of sacrificing old leaves to grow really nice new one. Sometimes the "scarificing" of old leaves is not seen untll something, inyour case BNs, removes the decaying vegitation off the old leaves.

Go back and look at my fert suggestion. Make sure that potassium is added as well as Iron. These two should help with your problem.

[Matt in Houston]

So should I trim the bad leaves all off and then add the new ferts? I was looking at adding the nutrifin root ferts, they are in black plastic tubes with holes in them. They say they last up to a year but I bet that's pretty optimistic.

[kwc1974]

Yes, trim off the old leaves when you add the ferts. Also rember to add a little extra at firs to alow the plants to recover.

I am not too big on nutrifin root ferts, I do not like haveing the plastic tubes left in the substrate after the fert is spent. I perfer a mixture of Seachem and ADA. My typical lineup is this

Seachem
Flourish
Flourish Iron
Flourish Potassium
Flourish Excel (only as a BBA treatment or small tanks)

ADA
Multi Bottom Long (I would use this for swords)
Green Gain (growth hormone...go easy on this)

Of course CO2 diffusion.

[cichlidchic]

yea, based on that amount of fertilization, you deffinately need to fert more.

i only said the burning thing because i did that by mistake when mine looked ill... and ended up dang near killing it. my bad....

[Darbex]

+1 I agree with Kevin

[cichlid1409]

Another worthless post by you with poor info.

)

F yo couch! :furious:




i still say its the plecos!

[TheOldMan]

Try adding a bit of driftwood for BN cats. They like the wood instead of the plants.

[Matt in Houston]

Try adding a bit of driftwood for BN cats. They like the wood instead of the plants.

I already have two big pieces of driftwood...one is a stump with two big roots branching off and the other is more of a trunk with a couple branches. They are rarely on the wood so far, but there is a cave under each piece where they live...one in each cave.

As an update to this thread, the ferts have helped a lot. I also think some of the scratching was caused by my oto cats...I have 6 swimming around in there and they are always eating and moving around the plants.

I had to toss one of the swords, it was damaged so badly after I trimmed it, it looked like a stump. The other one has recoved and is growing fast.