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Triddent fern, turning black/brown?

C

Chrispowell

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Joined
18 Apr 2014
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387
Hi all,

My Triddent fern that has been in my tank for around 2 months seems to be looking worse month on month. Its not very vibrent in colour anymore and looks Brown/ Black.

I had some co2 issues (Was off for 48 hours) about two weeks ago but apart from that things seemed to be going the right way. Its in strong lighting, in good flow and EI ferts.

Is this common? Are these quite hard plants to get looking good?

Any pointers gladly welcomed!

Chris
 
I have a few types of java fern including this trident and this has happened to my windelov, the windlov is in direct light whereas the trident is shaded the other ferns seem to be fine and the windelov seems to be dying I can only assume of too much light or too little nutrients but as my other plants are doing great I'm putting it down to light
 
I had the same with all my Java's in the low tech, got about 6 different M ptoropus sp. in thesere.. They all came lush green and big in submersed form from a high tech invironment with unknown parameters and almost all old leaves died off. New young leaves do good.. I guess it is the transplant shock into different water parameters it needs to addapt to.

I noticed the same with the ones i did put in the high tech tank.. But in high tech they recover pretty quick and grow very fast compared to a java in low tech.. In the high tech i have them very close to the surface where it gets full blast lights and it realy doesn't seem to bother.

In the low tech i noticed the older leaves slowly getting necrotic dots and getting yellow while younger leaves stay vibrent green.. This also took a few months to show realy good.. It looks like yours do that as well as shows in one of your pics. This could be an indication of a potassium shortage, potassium is very mobile in a plant and if there is a shortage the younger leaves will suck it out of the older leaves while growing. So dosing a bit extra Potassium Phosphate or Potassium Nitrate should help if thats the case.
Especialy if a leave is developing new you plantlets, these young plantlets suck all out off the older leave what the water column can't provide.

I noticed great improvement with my java's in my low tech with switching from complete ferts to mixing my own powdered ferts and dose extra potassium. :) But this will take several weeks before it shows..
 
My java fern was very healthy for a year until I had to turn the CO2 off for 3 days. Now a lot of the leaves have turned brown/black. I am putting it down to the change in CO2. I will give it a big prune and hopefully it will grow back with lush, green leaves.


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Thanks all, anyone know which is more likely to change this, potassium nitrate or phosphate?

These are right near the waters surface, fingers crossed I will start to see an improvement, do people just pick the new plantlets off the ends of the leaves?
 
Here is a pic from Dennerle nursery growing Java ferns.. ;) No idea what their humidity is, i guess 90%..
14441129_1106957722715932_2497483311211662090_n.jpg


Even if you buy them in the LFS from standing submersed.. They probably still are very fresh emersed form.. Some take it very good if you take'm home and put them in the tank submersed, others die off a lot of it's emersed leaves to form new submersed leaves. And even as i experienced, i bought them from a private source already grown submersed, to give an estimate, still 50% of it's old larger leaves died on me, probably because of the transplant shock into other parameters.. They can react touchy to that, but for the rest as Darrel says, it is hard to kill a Java completely, it's rhizome is about indestructable as soon as it is used to it's new place it'l come back.. I had totaly forgoten pieces of rhizomes in a wabi kusa emersed. it took months but it came back. It also depends a bit on the spieces, some are more touchy then others.. I have a M. mini needle which is still strugling after a year in the low tech, but in high tech it grows as a rocket. It is related to the trident as far as i know.. I have no personal experience with the real trident, but it could be a touchy one too. :)

most Java's is also very undemanding when it comes to ferts, i grow them in a little tank i never put ferts in it provides it's own with decomposition of other stuff dying in there and the shrimp poop..They do good in that tank.. And if an older java leave turns yellow and younger leaves don't it most likely is potassium shortage. (which goes actualy for all plants). But that's not what you can see from your pics, it just shows some yellow leaves not if the are old leaves. :) But potassium is anyway a fert you can always add, it wont harm, if it doesn't improve it not that, but you have to start somewhere.. But Java is known to like some extra potassium.. :)
 
Thanks everyone! I'm going to take some decent pics tonight. I will up potassium and make sure future water changes are done with the lights off
 
I've kept all sorts of java excluding the new mini versions. I regularly swap my trident from low to high tech and vice versa. I do see older leaves dying from the transition but never like this. Are you sure it's not slimy like BGA? Just check the leaves and make sure you can't scrape it off....
 
Sorry for another batch of terrible pictures!

So the main eye sores are the black tips some of the leaves are showing..?

The plantlets at the ends (I take it I just pull these off)

Some of the leaves have black spots on?

I have tried to rub the leaves but dosnt seem to budge much.. I do currently have some bba so am planning on cleaning this up with lower light levels

Chris
 
Black spots are just spores. Nothing to worry about. Probably stress response.
 
In my 180l it was covered with Java Fern but it also seems that the lower leaves were turning brown. What was worrying was that the plant itself seemed to be drying out. I did a massive prune last night - I hope it was just that the lower leaves were not getting any flow through them and therefore turned black. It just seemed to change from being very healthy to brown/black within a few days.


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Yes even with established fern, unless there is flow, old leaves can die. Sometimes it looks like K deficiency.

I find that I néed to prune the massively entangled rhizomes and thin them out a lot.
 
Thanks - there is a lot of flow in the tank but the fern was very thick - maybe that is the problem


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