[jart]

Hi all.
I thought I'd share my experience with crypt melt. Somewhat of a (semi) controlled experiment.

Some time ago (actually a few days before several hobbyists were due to come by to view my tank :angryfire ) I started to lose several balansae leaves. It looked to me like crypt melt, and I figured I would lose the whole lot. So I did a large water change, cleaned the cannister, and trimmed off all the affected leaves. Although I lost a lot of leaves, none of the crypts actually died.

This same thing happened a couple of months later, with a similar conclusion. Since my dosing regime and water change schedule is pretty constant, I began to wonder if the cause was poor water circulation (as a result of the cannister needing to be cleaned).

So over the past few weeks, I have been diligently watching the crypts (I now have 2 species, balansae and wendtii) while purposefully delaying my cannister cleaning. Crypt melt, if that's what it indeed is, has struck again. Circulation in the tank is obviously low.

I'll clean the cannister tonight. :icon_wink
I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced this?

 

[Boz]

That's an interesting observation. I've only had this "melt" happen once or so. From that point on, and this was purely by procrastination on my part, whenever I received/bought crypts, I kept them in the bag they were shipped in for...ahem...a week or more. (Procrastination is my middle name) I would dump a bit of my tank water in the bag to keep them wet, but it always took me a while to actually get them planted. With this lazy approach, I'd never again encountered any type of melting. Now I always do this, taking the approach that they need slow acclimation perhaps like sensitive fish require?