Vals, glorious Vals

[Zilla]

Why must they be such a pain to maintain? I know, it's because they are in one of my tanks. :fish2:

After getting frustrated with looking at dead leaves for the past week or so, I took all of mine out and stripped them of their dead leaves which turn into slimy strings that don't like to easily come off of skin. My plan worked well, but since they are planted in Flourite, putting them back lead to the tank looking like a big dust cloud. Feh!

The tank is almost clear again, but how people other maintain their Vals? Do you just leave the dead leaves? Trim them off? I know if the tops of Vals are trimmed, the rest of the leaf dies off which is a whole other issue.

Other than that, considering the abuse they took in the 55, they are recovering well. They've got all new shoots popping up all over the place.

[rich311k]

I snip off the leaves that do not look good. Plant does not seem to mind.

[Wild Turkey]

I snip off the leaves that do not look good. Plant does not seem to mind.

Same, just the goldfish does it for me. It still manages to spread pretty quickly and looks very healthy. Its corkscrew IIRC

[Zilla]

Carp, I meant to order trimmers the other day and I didn't do it.

Thanks for the tip. Trimmers / scissors are being added to my next order list as nobody locally carries small ones.

[Lady Hobbs]

Newly planted vals will often do that and appear to darned near be dying off. Suddenly the roots will start to spread and they'll perk right back up.
Make sure you don't use Excel with these plants. Vals and several others melt with Excel.

[Lab_Rat]

I just snip off dead leaves, or just the tops if the tops are what is dying. I don't have problems with the rest of the leaf dying if I only clip off the top. Maybe I have weird plants.

As far as using Excel with vals, I think as long as you titrate up your dosing of Excel to allow the plants to adjust you are fine. I started dosing Excel at half strength qod and increased it to full strength qd. I now dose slightly above the recommended dose daily because I have a lot of plants and the vals are growing very well. As far as trimmers, I simply use cuticle scissors since the curvature of the blades makes it easy to trim the plants.