July, 2022 - Fireplace aquarium

I’ve been looking for a red plant to replace the Ludwigia palustris mini ‘Super Red’ which is an awesome stem plant, but which comfortably exceeds 50 cm in length and so is really too large for the Fireplace Aquarium – keeping it trimmed was just too much hassle. Previously, I had a go with Alternanthera reineckii ‘Rot’ which started out promisingly, but then never really made a recovery after the usual ‘cut off and replant the tops‘ process. Further reading suggests that may have been where I went wrong – leaving the rooted bottom section to resprout new growth after trimming may have been a better approach with alternanthera, in contrast to approaches with many other aquarium plants. I’ll keep that in mind for the ‘Rosanervig’. Rosanervig is supposed to be an intermediate sized alternanthera growing to 20 cm or a little larger.

Adapting Alternanthera reineckii ‘Rosanervig’ to submersed growth

pot of Alternanthera reineckii 'Rosanervig'

pot from the nursery

individual Alternanthera reineckii 'Rosanervig' plants

individual plants

in the Fireplace Aquarium

I received in from Pro Shrimp a quite large portion of Tropica-grown Alternanthera reineckii ‘Rosanervig’ potted in rockwool. Removing the rockwool carefully with pinsettes gave six healthy-looking emersed-form plants. I planted the Rosanervig in the middle left of the Fireplace Aquarium, in front of a developing back curtain of Vallisneria asiatica, and behind a foreground patch of Cryptocoryne parva. The emersed form leaves really aren’t very happy when fully submersed and several were shed straight away, or started developing some rattiness. Some of the amano shrimp may even have had a bit of a go at nibbling the straggly looking leaves.

Submersed form leaves start to look good after two weeks

new Alternanthera reineckii 'Rosanervig' submersed growth

submersed growth after two weeks

new submersed growth detail

After a couple of weeks, it’s clear that new submersed form leaves are developing nicely on the Rosanervig. Emersed form leaves are a blotchy light green with hints of red undertones on the top surface with pale pink/green undersides. In contrast, the submersed form leaves are deep red with bright pink veining structures on top and bright red/pink underneath. Previously the slow growing alternanthera had issues with algae collecting on the upper surfaces. Algae hasn’t been a problem since the revised estimative index dosing scheme was implemented in the Fireplace Aquarium so I’m optimistic for the Rosanervig’s prospects.

googly eyed friend

stripes and transparency

There’s an interesting new inhabitant in the Shrimphaus, what looks like a spontaneous mutation in the bloody mary shrimp lineage. Bloody mary shrimp are generally a solid translucent red throughout but this little fella (I think it’s a boy) is mostly clear and colourless, except for a red head, red stripe just above the tail, and one red horizontal back segment. This is the “rili” pattern, and is reasonbly easy to find in red cherry neocaridina shrimp, but there isn’t much information on ‘bloody mary rili’ shrimp. The eyes seem to stand out a lot more as well. I think this is because in the usual bloody mary shrimp the eye region surrounding the black pupils is reddish pink, whereas this googly eyed individual has completely white surrounding tissue.

Bloody mary neocaridina shrimp have a reputation as being reasonably genetically stable, so this seems a little unusual. I’ll keep a look out to see how this one develops – I’m not actually certain it is a bloody mary shrimp – and whether any more different and interesting mutants come up.