Need help with plant identification !

[rt964]

I'm trying to get my head around improving the planting and 'scaping of my discus tank. I did the usual thing of buying some plants from MA and, after planting, just throwing away the names of the plants ... now I just need to figure out what plants I've got in my tank, so I can get started

The challenge I have is how to upload images of the plants to share with you guys ... how do I do this ??

 

[Westyggx]

Take photos
Go to www.imageshack.us
Grab the image URL
Come back to here
Paste url around these tags

And your done

 

[rt964]

I'll give that a go. I've got a Flickr account, but couldn't get that to work !

 

[Westyggx]

Flikr should work if you have uploaded your photos, load one via Firefox or IE and copy the URL from the top bar.

 

[rt964]

I tried that approach, but all I got was a blue square with a question mark in it ? Maybe I'll just set it up and give the URL, but that just feels like defeat at the hands of technology

 

[rt964]

Let's have another go:

The Tank

Failing that, here is the photo stream on flickr, where you can see all the photos:
http://flic.kr/p/a36vNH

 

[rt964]

Right, I think I've got the technology back on my side, so here are some images of the plants that I could do with some help in identifying ...

Plant 1:

Plant 2 (before I trimmed the algae!):

Plant 3:

Plant 4:

Thanks in advance

Richard

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,
First and last plants are Amazon Swords (Echinodorus), they look like they may be E. amazonicus and E. bleheri, but that would be no more than a guess for species. The other green plants look like a Hygrophila it may be one of the forms of H. polysperma. The red leaved one maybe Alternanthera reineckii, which is quite a tolerant red leaved plant. I never grown any of these red leaved stem plants, so others may have a better ID.

cheers Darrel

 

[rt964]

Thanks Darrel. It's the main plant in picture 3 that I want to identify. I'm trying to decide whether to keep it or get rid of it. It grows quite quickly (which is good for keeping some of the algae at bay), but sprouts roots from it's stem, which I don't like the look of. I'm also fighting an outbreak of stringy algae (staghorn/hair ?), and may resort to a suitable fish to chomp through it, as it's taking a lot of patience to keep removing it a few strands at a time.

 

[ghostsword]

Plant 3 looks like polyspherma, great plant, grows very fast.


.

 

[ceg4048]

Thanks Darrel. It's the main plant in picture 3 that I want to identify. I'm trying to decide whether to keep it or get rid of it. It grows quite quickly (which is good for keeping some of the algae at bay), but sprouts roots from it's stem, which I don't like the look of. I'm also fighting an outbreak of stringy algae (staghorn/hair ?), and may resort to a suitable fish to chomp through it, as it's taking a lot of patience to keep removing it a few strands at a time.

Why don't you just trim or remove your H. polysperma? It's pretty clear that the large mass is causing flow blockage across the tank resulting in CO2 starvation. That is why you are getting hair algae. Using fish to solve your algae problem is not the wisest course of action. The algae is an indication of failing plant health, so you should fix the root cause instead of hoping that your fish will sweep the problem under the rug.

Cheers,

 

[rt964]

Why don't you just trim or remove your H. polysperma? It's pretty clear that the large mass is causing flow blockage across the tank resulting in CO2 starvation. That is why you are getting hair algae. Using fish to solve your algae problem is not the wisest course of action. The algae is an indication of failing plant health, so you should fix the root cause instead of hoping that your fish will sweep the problem under the rug.

Cheers,

Funnily enough, that's exactly what I ended up doing last night ! It looks a lot thinner now that it's had a haircut. I've also just fitted an unlined diffuser for the CO2 and 3000lph powerhead, so hopefully that will help the dispertion of the gas around the tank and reduce the algae.