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Elvis has left the building...and evidently is residing in my aquarium, judging by the looks of my new fake plant. Okay, went to add some fake plants to my aquarium today. Got some nice silk realistic looking ones...packaging guarantees non-toxic for aquaria...they look real, have minimal smell...no complaints outta me on them.

Then my husband, who would decorate the tank like a casino if he were given free reign, picks out this plastic plant. It's actually pretty for a fake plant, otherwise I would have nixed it. Anyway, I got this thing home and opened the sealed package and this horrible plastic smell nearly knocked me flat. As it was, I did get a headache from it. I'm highly chem-sensitive thanks to workplace related accidents. Anyhow, I was wondering what you all know about these plastic plants. (Brand name of mine was Penn Plax). Are they indeed safe? Why do they stink so much...pthalates? And do the fish find them as obnoxious to their version of their olfactory senses as I do? I know, none of you is a fish, but some of you may have some idea from first hand experience or you've seen some oddball research.

I sorta know about pthalates because I have a toddler and there's controversy about pthalates in plastic toys and their effects on health of people. I just don't know anything about the effect or presence of pthalates in fish decor.

Sorry for such a dingbat question. I feel self-conscious even asking. But inquiring minds want to know. I love my fish and I don't want to annoy or poison them. So far they've had a blast with everything I've put in to amuse them.

As for real plants, well my dad keeps bugging me to switch to those. But I have enough newbie issues to deal with right now without opening that can of tubifex.

Penn Plax is a well known company. I wonder if the smell is coming from the plant or the packaging? In either case, I would certainly wash the piece of plastic (aka "plant") very well under hot water before using it. It also could not hurt to soak it a few days in a very weak bleach solution before using it and the rewash it to remove any residues. After all of this, if you still have doubts, just toss the plant.
-Shane

This is my personal opinion: If you can't have real plants (for whatever reason), try to decorate the tank without plants.

There are MANY examples of pleasingly decorated tanks without plants.

Plastic plants, however good they are, will always look somewhat fake.

Real plants are not always looking good either, but there are several kinds that do look quite nice and are easy to care for. Amazon swords are very common, popular and easy to keep (just remmeber to add some plant food every now and again, or they will "starve"). Hygrophila and Wisteria are other good ones, as is most types of valice (Valisneria spp).

For low-light conditions, you can also try some Anubia spp. These are best "planted" above the substrate, for example tied to wood or stones in the tank.

Plants aren't really that difficult.

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Mats

So far the real plants I've seen available for sale look downright nasty. Dead bits all over, like a salad past its prime. I'm told that PetSmart has a really nice selection, so I'll see what they've got. But if my only source is to be the 2 LFS where I got the majority of my supplies and my fish...uh...no, it's not going to work out, sorry to say. I definitely would rather have no greenery at all than anything I've seen so far at the store.

I did soak the stinky plastic plant in some hot water and that helped a little bit. So far the fish seem fine with it and don't have any aversion to it. However, I plan on taking it out in the not too distant future when it's time for the next gravel vac, so I have room to put the fake aqueduct from my original "Greco-Roman Ruins" theme back in. My cories miss their "clubhouse" and the natural looking resin rock formations I put in to replace the aqueduct don't interest them at all, even though I worked hard to find one that offered the same kind of shelter and play opportunities as the aqueduct. They will poke around, but don't stay and congregate, whereas they would sleep on top of the aqueduct and hang out under it.

I am pleased with the look of the silk plants by Tetra and some other company whose name escapes me at the moment. Those look surprisingly real, and the fish seem to love them, too. When the light shines through the silk leaves it's amazing how pretty and non-fakey the effect is. The only drawback I can see coming with these is that they likely will fray or look dirty eventually. At least that is how the ones in the display tanks at the LFS look.

Well anyway I will definitely steer clear of all-plastic aquarium plants from now on. I wish the US would outright outlaw pthalates in ALL plastics for home use so I wouldn't have to worry about coming into contact with the stuff.

Well an update--removed the plastic plant...and found it smelled even WORSE, if that's possible. It smelled like um...how to say this delicately? No way to do so...okay it smelled like the underarms of someone who forgot to shower.

At any rate, it's out. My tank is now beautiful and classy. But sadly I found that a new danio I got over the weekend had some sort of wasting disease. I've now lost yet another of the new danios, which was from a different stock tank at the LFS. I may lose everyone, after FINALLY getting my tank cycled and set with decor the whole family can live with and that the fish like.

May I ask how many fish are in this new tank?
Amanda

Judging by the "Signature":
6 Albino Bronze Cories, 1 Cory Elegans, 1 Peppered Cory, 2 Sterbai, 12 Zebra Danios

But from the sounds of the post, maybe some of the Danio's are not actually all still alive.

Depending on their individual size, that may be a little bit too many for a still cycling tank...

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Mats

i sugest you search for a reputable mail order plant company. an try a few plant forums to see if any1s dealt with them.

put this way, bouthg from one company, plants were great, but it wass a little expensive (i've spent over £100 on plants over the last 2 years)then i bought from another company because they were cheaper, and it showed, the pacaging was cr@p they were late, half the plants were dead etc etc.

but a good mail order company and the plants are wonderful. put this way, of the 200+ plants that came in i thrwe 1 away because it was a bit too squashed.

heh funny story.

looks like I'm not the only around with a -unfortunately in the Age of Eternal Stench- highly developed sense of smell and little tolerance for certain chemicals.

I too can be knocked out by strong chemical odours, as it is; I'm allergic to aromactic oils (breeze continue etc), extremely fine dust, chemically added odours in detergents, strong perfume etc. it's hell finding all those without smell chemicals added. it is there, but it takes searching.

anyway, back on topic: to each and everyone's own, if Hellocatfish likes the plastic plants, stick to them.

DON'T buy any live ones without doing a thorough job on the tank lighting.

live plant keeping = good light management!

often when people start having trouble with live plants there's a zillion suggestions about:
-adding CO2....wich I have never done, that's what fish do: add CO2
-add fertilizers...now if you like a gooy tank full of blue-greens and slimey bacteria, do just this. if you do not..... that's where fish poop comes in.
-change the substrate. well, in some cases (if you have marbles for example) this might do some good. but if you have moderately fine gravel or sand (as you should! it's a CATFISH tank here), substrate is just fine.

NO>

you want to keep live plants, you have to do a good light job. simple as that.
there are 3 factors chiming in at doing such:

#1: the right kind of bulbs, fluorescent tubes, whatchamacallits. office-lights or those warm white room bulbs are not going to do it. you need real honest-to-god aquarium bulbs/lights etc. Gro-Lux, Dennerle, Aqua-sun, Aquarelle, Sun-lite, etc etc etc

#2: you need plenty of it! I'd say at least 1-1,5 watts per floorspace of 10cm x 10 cm. 1-1,5 watt per 1 square decimeter. for the non metrical people; I hope someone good with numbers can recalculate it to square feet. numbers give me a headache. and if you like plants such as Vallisneria, Echinodorus, Hydrilla, Zosterifolia, Eichornia azureus etc: make it minimum 2 watts per square decimeter floorplace.
if you have a tank higher than 2 feet waterdepth, go well over 2 watt! or try something else like HQL lights, the ones people use to grow certain plants with.
herbs, you know.


#3: it should be switched on at least 10 hours a day and then I mean ALL the lights. the whole wattage. you want to dim the lights in the dusk or dawn hours? fine, but those dimmed lights are outside the minimum day of 10 hours.
personally i'd say 12 hrs full light is even better. and outside that duration fiddle with "sun ups" and "sundowns" to your own delight.

with lightmanagement like this you should easily be able to grow Anubias, Cryptocoryne, Crinum, Nymphea lotus, Javaferns, Vallisneria gigantea and V neotropicalis, Bacopa, Hygrophila, Pistia stratoides, moss, Oakleaffern -Ceratopteris spp, Samolus, Echinodorus etc.

once the lighting is fixed I can tell you some more tricks to really boost it through the roof.

SG out

Sidguppy,

You make very good suggestions.

I have found, from experience, that many plants will grow without much care other than decent lights. However, I have also found that a little bit of dedicated fertilizer works. I usually use half the recommended dose from the manufacturer, but it appears to have a good effect.

I prefer the "tablet" type fertilizers that you dig into the substrate, rather than the liquid one. That is because I, like Sidguppy, believe that fish-poo makes pretty good fertilizer in general, but more importantly, I replace at least 25% of the water each week, which means that 25% of what the plants didn't take up that week would be gone in the water change. If the fertilizer is under an inch of gravel/sand, it's less likely to just be flushed down the drain via my syphoning...

And I'm talking about aquarium specific plant fertilizers from Tetra or RedSea for example, not the stuff you buy for potted or garden plants at the garden centre.

Unless the plants are more important than the fish, I agree that CO2 isn't necessary. Most people who do HEAVY planting have few fish (for good reasons), and they will need CO2 added just to compensate for the lack of CO2 from the fish. But if you just want a few plants, rather than a veritable jungle, then CO2 isn't necessary.

Good lights are DEFINITELY essential - and don't forget that just because there's still light from the flourescent tube, it doesn't mean that it's full effect or that it's still the same type of light, so replace them at least every year, preferrably every 6 months or so.

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Mats

Thanks for all the information! Well here is what is going on...yes, it gets odder...

I found one more dead Danio yesterday when I got up. He was smushed up against the intake tube. Fetched him out easily, noticed a yellowish tinge to him. I'm not sure if what I was seeing was Velvet disease or not. My sense of smell is indeed way overdeveloped, but my eyes are 40 years old and I have a heck of a time seeing up close. Also, the fish had clearly been dead for awhile, but fortunately no sign that he'd been nibbled on. Probably because none of the fish want to get too close to the intake tube. Once I freed him and he went free floating, then yes, the rest of the Danios tried to take a nibble while I pulled him out.

He had one pop-eye, one normal eye. This is similar to one of the other Danios who passed on. And the first one that I actively had to kill was acting okay but emaciated and had darkened gills. All of the deceased Danios thus far have been very thin.

Today, no fatalities, but the ammonia went up a bit. I did a large water change and gravel vac, and took apart the filter to clean it. Found something that looked like mildew in some parts of the plastic of the AquaClear filter casing itself. That was a surprise because I'd only just cleaned out the filter last Saturday. I also took out the carbon, which had been in there for only a couple of days. I put in a new sponge and am now running with two sponges and the bag of pellets that supposedly house extra bacteria.

Filled the tank back up, and lo and behold, I finally notice that one of the fake silk plants was glittering with eggs!

They certainly aren't Danio eggs, because these were adhesive and danio eggs aren't. My entire population of cories consists of juveniles not even an inch long yet...except for the two Sterbai I got the day I bought the afflicted Danios. The two Sterbai aren't fully mature either, but they are older than my other cories. So I'm guessing that I'm looking at Sterbai eggs...or goodness help me, some horrible parasitic cysts of some kind. I'm off to find some pictures of Sterbai eggs to try and figure this out.

OKay, I looked at photos, looked at the "eggs". I think it's parasites, then, because on closer inspection, the eggs look conical, at least the ones I could get a good look at on one leaf near the glass. Of course, I could just be looking at what was left of eggs that had been nibbled on. I suppose I should pull up the plant and the weird eggy things. But it's in the morning here, I need to grab some shuteye before my kid wakes up. The last thing I need is to be sticking my arm back in that blasted tank after having spent all of the day changing over the water.

I'd thoroughly recommend NOT cleaning the filter for at least a couple of weeks (unless it completely stops flowing). This is because the process of cleaning the filter will remove the good bacteria that you're trying to build up. It's perfectly fine that the filter is quite gooey inside, as long as it's got good flow of water.

A (good!) photo of the eggs would be good to be able to identify them. As far as I know, all cory eggs are round, so if that's not the shape of them, then it's not cory eggs...

I doubt sticking your arm in the water will cause the fish much harm, but you should of course wash properly both before and after (and make sure you rinse of soap very WELL before you stick your arm in there!)

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Mats

Okay, I did the best I could to photograph the weird eggs. I will post the pictures under a new topic and include photos of the whole tank and a picture of the OUTSIDE of the filter so you can see how bad the deposits are, even as precip from evaporation. It's just as bad internally, too.

hellocatfish wrote:I can't get a photo of the eggs since they are hard to see against the color of the plant. I also would need to use the macro feature to get a good picture and my camera just can't do the job through the aquarium glass. They still look the same, and the fish are all fine. I will remove the plant when my husband gets home from work and can watch our daughter for me.

When I clean the filter I rinse all the cartridge parts in dechlorinated tank water that I had siphoned out, except for the new sponge I recently added, which I rinsed in dechlorinated clean tap water.

Everything stays soaked. The only parts that get scrubbed are the filter itself and the intake tubes.

Will this procedure still be disruptive and harmful to my good bacteria?

I clean the filter so often because I have a problem with mineral deposits. If I wait too long between cleanings, they seem to harden even more and are harder to eradicate. Of course it's not a problem for the cartridges, but it can be hard on the mechanical part of the filter, I believe it's called the impeller chamber???? But I did this particular cleaning because of the dead danio. Maybe that was unnecessary. I don't know, I'm still new to this and feeling my way through. I would have called and asked my dad but he's been busy with cancer tests.

Speaking of dad, I know he really wants me to put real plants in the tank. He talks about it all the time. He was so glad I got rid of most of the artificial looking features in the tank. It was for him that I have done so much redecorating, since my husband and daughter liked the fakey stuff. But Dad was pretty upset about all that. Every time he would come over he'd complain and complain and complain. I didn't like invading my fish's home all the time but trying to keep everyone happy with the decor was a nightmare. I finally got settled with decor I think we all can live with and the fish seem to enjoy, and this happens. Sigh...

Anyway, I thank everyone for the information about lighting and planted tanks. I have read some of that already. I don't want to try my hand at real plants until I thoroughly understand what I'm dealing with, and I think probably in the end what might work for me is a mix of what I have now and one nice real plant. Or maybe some floating ones on the top, but not too many. I have to be careful of disrupting the bubble surfing surface of my peppered cory. He likes to ride the bubbles from the undergravel filter outlet upside down across the top of the tank.

Sorry this post is too long.

EDIT: MatsP, sorry, nevermind about answering my questions about cleaning the filter. I have just seen your discussion with the fellow from California who had lost a Pleco and was experiencing a new cycle after cleaning his cannister filter. No need repeating all that with me. I understand. I am sure I can find a way to clean out the impeller chamber without disrupting the rest of the system too much. If I get the right kind of brush, which I did see at the LFS, I can probably snake it down in there without having to pull up the filter. Oh well I'll leave the post as is, in case any other lurking newbies need to learn from my mistakes.