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How do you water a root?
An aquarium does not only include the inhabitants and plants. Roots also find a home in most aquariums. They serve as shelter, food and shade for the fish. Plants can be tied to them and their shape often serves as a perfect eye-catcher in the tank. However, many an aquarist has already gone crazy inserting a root. Because many roots have it in them that they float up.
To prevent this, you should water them for several days or even weeks at best. To do this, place the root in a bucket or in the bathtub, depending on its size, and fill the container with hot water. As a result, the root soaks up water and sinks faster in the aquarium. The larger and more extensive the root, the longer watering can take. This is completely normal and you are not doing anything wrong. Still, it takes a lot of patience to get a nice big root to sink. If you don’t have a bathtub, you can use a large plastic box instead.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s a laundry basket or a mason’s box. The main thing is that the root fits in completely. In order to accelerate the water absorption and thus the sinking, you can weigh down the root with a stone or another heavy object.
Tricks to keep the root down
Of course, there are other tricks from experienced aquarists how to make a root sink:
- Water
- drill holes
- Complain
- Glue with aquarium silicone
- just let it float in the aquarium until it sinks
- Boil in a saucepan with salted water
The disadvantages of watering in the aquarium
Roots can also be conveniently watered in the aquarium itself. However, this has two disadvantages. On the one hand, the tank doesn’t look so nice if a root is floating around on the surface for several weeks. On the other hand, many roots tend to develop a bacterial layer on top of them in the beginning. This one really doesn’t look good either. Therefore, roots should always be watered somewhere else beforehand. When watering, the pollutants that are still on the root after purchase are also released into the water. You would also prefer not to have these in the aquarium.
If you water a root in the tank, it can happen that the water becomes cloudy or even turns brown. This is completely normal and is due to the humic substances. If you water the root beforehand, you can change the water every two to three days. In this way, the root is freed from all germs and will no longer damage the aquarium later.