# Staurogyne repens melting away - Please help!



## bluelife (Mar 3, 2014)

Hey friends,

I have started a new 2 footer and all seemed to be going well until a week back. My staurogyne repens that has been growing well seems to be melting and rotting away.

Let me give you some more details so that I can get your valuable feedback 

Tank - L 24 inch X B 18 inch X H 18 inch
Substrate - ADA Amazonia
Lighting - 4 X 24 watt T5 HO at about 2 inches above the water surface
Photoperiod - 6 hours first 3 weeks , 7 hours past 1 week
Co2 - Pressurized 1-2 bps via a ceramic diffuser 24/7
Ferts - ADA Green Brighty Step 1 (2 pushes daily)
ADA Brighty K (1 push daily)

Had done a dry start with Montecarlo and staurogyne repens and flooded the tank after 2 weeks. Staurogyne repens was doing extremely well for the first 1 week after flooding but its all melting away now. The issue seems to be at the front of the tank , I have staurogyne repens at the rear of the tank that look fine.

I don't know the water parameters since test kits are very expensive to get hold of in India.

Requesting you experienced mates to throw some light on the issue..attaching a few pics so that you can get a better idea of what im speaking about.

Pic 3 - Staurogyne at the front of tank
Pic 4 - Staurogyne at the back

Thanks,
Ivan


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## r45t4m4n (Feb 12, 2014)

I had this happen to my S Repens carpet, about 200 stems total. I was not able to find a reason and many other members with the same problem were not either.


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## bluelife (Mar 3, 2014)

r45t4m4n said:


> I had this happen to my S Repens carpet, about 200 stems total. I was not able to find a reason and many other members with the same problem were not either.


Thanks for the info , did the plants recover after that ?


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## sonik200 (Jul 31, 2013)

Same happened to mine 2 months ago. Some recovered some didnt. Those survived started growing well until yesterday, i noticed 1 plant started to melt and 2 today. I'm sure there will be more when i check tomorrow morning. Its a slow spreading process every time and I'm not sure how to stop it.


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## sma (Jul 21, 2011)

I cannot keep s. repens because of this. I've tried numerous times and it always melts like this. I gave up on it


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## r45t4m4n (Feb 12, 2014)

bluelife said:


> Thanks for the info , did the plants recover after that ?


About 10 survived. Going to give it a go again with some plants from another source.


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## jasa73 (Jun 3, 2007)

This happened to me recently as well. I was wondering if the area I planted had too much flow. I noticed there was quite a current and the leaves were being pushed. Now I don't know if this was the cause or not but I'm wondering if anyone has had experience with this plant enough to know. What is different between the back and front of your tank? It looks like you get even light spread from your suspended fixture.


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## ChemGuyEthan (Apr 13, 2014)

I was just ready to post on the exact same topic when I saw this. :icon_neut

So no one knows what causes this? I transferred some to a new tank that'd been growing in another tank of mine for months now. It was doing great during cycling, noticeable growth. Now within the past few days/week, most of it is melting.

I thought maybe it was from cutting the CO2 back when I added fish, but I had been slowly dialing it back for about a week before that hoping the plants would adjust. Maybe not? :frown:

The flow comment is an interesting thought...mine started melting first at the corner of a large rock where flow would have been coming across... 

I really like the look of s repens and until now have found it very easy to grow. I would be interested to know if anyone ends up having a definitive cause and/or solution for this.


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## Cap10Squirty (Feb 2, 2014)

Happened to all of mine about a week ago. The Staurogyne sp. 'Porto Velho' was unaffected.


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## bluelife (Mar 3, 2014)

jasa73 said:


> This happened to me recently as well. I was wondering if the area I planted had too much flow. I noticed there was quite a current and the leaves were being pushed. Now I don't know if this was the cause or not but I'm wondering if anyone has had experience with this plant enough to know. What is different between the back and front of your tank? It looks like you get even light spread from your suspended fixture.


I don't think there is any difference between the front and back areas of the tank, the light is very much even


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## thor79 (Apr 15, 2014)

Interested in hearing the resolution to this. I'm planning to add some s repens after my HC matures in my dry start I'm currently doing. Middle of week 2 with the HC atm.


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## popytoys (Dec 16, 2013)

It happened to me before that....I put too much fertilize with high light. I keep changing water (with conditioner)... and the melt started to stop...but almost 505% of them were gone already...


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## jfynyson (Apr 15, 2013)

Just curious what may be common among each of your situations. Have any of you or all of you uprooted any plants, vacuumed the gravel up, or stirred up the gravel in your tanks within a week or so from the melt occurring ? Or do any of you have ADA aquasoil (I believe this is the one) that's somewhat fresh in the tank ? Some forms of the ADA soils put off ammonia for a little while.

What I'm getting at is that I have a theory that the s. repens melt can be directly correlated to minor ammonia spikes from these potential activities listed above. A similar thread before I found this to be a common theme so it seems plausible. I have observed this phenom in my tank at least 3 times now and it only happens if I uproot plants near the s.repens (I have a 135gal so I have to uproot close to the s.repens for it to occur as opposed to the other side of my tank). My tank being bigger has a chance to dilute the ammonia by the time it hits the s. repens if I uproot plants from a farther area of my tank. Smaller tanks uprooting will not allow as much dilution or distance before hitting the plant and thus causes the melt. This is the only common theme I've found. 

Happy investigating.


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## bluelife (Mar 3, 2014)

jfynyson said:


> Just curious what may be common among each of your situations. Have any of you or all of you uprooted any plants, vacuumed the gravel up, or stirred up the gravel in your tanks within a week or so from the melt occurring ? Or do any of you have ADA aquasoil (I believe this is the one) that's somewhat fresh in the tank ? Some forms of the ADA soils put off ammonia for a little while.
> 
> What I'm getting at is that I have a theory that the s. repens melt can be directly correlated to minor ammonia spikes from these potential activities listed above. A similar thread before I found this to be a common theme so it seems plausible. I have observed this phenom in my tank at least 3 times now and it only happens if I uproot plants near the s.repens (I have a 135gal so I have to uproot close to the s.repens for it to occur as opposed to the other side of my tank). My tank being bigger has a chance to dilute the ammonia by the time it hits the s. repens if I uproot plants from a farther area of my tank. Smaller tanks uprooting will not allow as much dilution or distance before hitting the plant and thus causes the melt. This is the only common theme I've found.
> 
> Happy investigating.


Yes i do have new ADA aquasoil in the tank, i dont remember disturbing the soil around the S.Repens but after seeing them melt i did trim away all the melt in the front of my tank .. now the melt has started at the rear part of the tank as well .. Im thinking of uprooting all the S.Repens and replacing them with "Lilaeopsis brasiliensis" .. I guess that would be a easier plant .. what say folks??


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## jfynyson (Apr 15, 2013)

Fresh aquasoil does leach ammonia for a period. So, my theory still holds.

Sent from my ADR6400L using Tapatalk


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## r45t4m4n (Feb 12, 2014)

Mine melted on a 4 month old tank that without aquasoil, 0 Ammonia. S Repens were carpeting the tank so I was not pulling anything out around them. Ferts/CO2/Light were on a stable schedule, no radical changes.

Before melt:


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## andrewq (May 22, 2013)

I have a 20 gallon long high tech. Full carpet of repens, and samething happened. Some plants started to melt, so I increased water changes. The water changes helped stop the melting. I also pulled all the repens, and sold them. My repens had crazy long roots. I wondered if maybe the plants were competing for nutrients, and that is why they started to melt. Not enough nutrients in the substrate?????


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## ChemGuyEthan (Apr 13, 2014)

I'll chime back in here on the ammonia theory. I think that could be it, but I think we must consider the pH on top of the ammonia. I had my s. repens in the tank throughout the entire 2.5 week cycle. In the beginning ammonia registered beyond the api test kit, >8ppm. But I was running CO2 pretty heavy, this kept the pH down to around 5.8 to 6.0. At that pH, nearly all of the ammonia actually exists as ammonium which is significantly less toxic and harmful.

As I prepared to get fish and nearing the end of the cycle, my ammonia was nearly non-existent but my pH had crept up to 6.4. Now, thinking back, when I did water changes, the siphon was positioned right next to the s. repens that melted first. Perhaps given the higher pH overall, and the fact that the siphon disturbed the aquasoil in that spot, maybe the ammonia spike theory is a possibility. As the soil was disturbed and filters were off, there was a local spike in ammonia, coupled with the local higher pH from new water, this may have caused the problem.

I've never seen this with s. repens in my larger tank with eco substrate. And since I've been more cognizant of the repens, I haven't had any more melt. *fingers crossed*

Can anyone else give an idea of their pH in the tanks where they had the melt? Perhaps it's the local ammonia coupled with higher pH's that's a problem.


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## MantisX (Aug 25, 2004)

Try this on for size. Same thing is happening to my repens in my 20 long high tech. However, I can take the melting, almost dead stem and put it my wife's little 8 gallon upstairs with NO co2 and moderate lighting and it does an immediate 180 and looks beautiful in a few days time.


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## Positron (Jul 22, 2013)

Ahh yes the mystery melting repens. I had this happen to me twice over the last year. There was another thread exactly like this one about the issue. Basically I think it's:

1)Acclimation issue. Even in a well established tank nutrient values can fluctuate. S. Repens seems to be sensitive to fluctuations like this. I can't see what nuetrient it is, though.

2)S. repens will do this if it senses something is wrong, or if it thinks it's a change in seasons. There could be a chemical messenger that s. repens sends out and it can effect the other plants. The messenger could indicate to other s. repens to loose all leaves and sprout new ones.

3)Low phosphate / Overdose micro's: From my limited experience with this, I know atleast one of my melts was due to low phosphates and too many micro nutrients. However, when mine melted like this the lower leaves were first to go: they got GSA bad and fell off. As a rule of thumb, try increase net phosphate in the water so it's about 2ppm and you are adding 1.5 ppm 3x a week. Getting values of 6ppm phosphate is ok. IMO phosphate is a key nutrient that is often overlooked as needing only 1ppm or so. Although the plant itself could only need 1ppm, PO4 helps regulate micro nutrients in the water by making sure they are not toxic (PO4 binds to micros). 

Even if your test kit show 1ppm + of phosphate it could be "lying." That 1ppm could be bound to a micro nutrient, unable to be used by the plant. When you test for PO4 the testing solution breaks those bonds with acid and gives false result.


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## bluelife (Mar 3, 2014)

Have ripped out all the S.Repens yesterday and as some of our fellow member has said , they did have crazy long roots..ive now hoping my MonteCarlo would catch up and carpet the foreground


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## diseased (May 25, 2011)

My hypothesis is that S. repens needs a low tech tank to grow, maybe it doesn't like high ferts or CO2 or other fancy additives. I have a carpet growing in and it is doing pretty well so far with only a small amount of Flourish added weekly.

That reminds me...


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## scx (Sep 8, 2013)

I have repens growing high tech. Pressurized co2, certs, high light. TDS 500, eco complete,


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## Bettatail (Feb 12, 2009)

is it the same problem as star grass?

Star grass grow fast, also have really heavy rooting, if it grow into a dense big bush and roots suck up the available nutrients fast than that the substrate release, the big bush of star grass melt from the bottom.


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## dzega (Apr 22, 2013)

what is the tank temp? mine melts now in tank where overheating happens(29C). cant think of any other reason :/


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