Category: Plants

Planting Anubias barteri nana ‘Pangolino’

Posted on by Andy Pierce

‘Pangolino’ from Dennerle is thought to be the anubias with the smallest leaves and thereby very suitable for nanotanks.  I’ve been looking for this plant for a long time but it has been consistently unavailable until very recently when I noticed some in stock at Horizon Aquatics.  As a bonus Horizon is also a sponsor of the UK Aquatic Plant Society so I was happy to be able to pick up some Pangolino and support the society at the same time.  The pots arrived promptly and in great condition.

Preparing tissue culture plants for the aquarium

As usual, tissue culture plants arrive in sealed pots suspended in a nutrient jelly.  You rinse off the jelly, separate out the individual plantlets, cutting them apart if necessary and trimming off any debris, then you’re ready to plant.  I have noticed that it’s not unusual to get some strange growth patterns included in amongst normal growth form plants with tissue culture pots, presumably because the plants don’t always grow completely correctly in culture.  There was a pretty good mass of this material to be removed with the Pangolino, but not to worry, there were still a lot of quality individual plantets to be had.

Anubias barteri nana 'Pangolino'
emersed and submersed Pangolino

Planting emersed and submersed

My main goal with the Pangolino is to try to grow it emersed in the river run of the Shrimphaus, where the hope is the small compact leaves will keep it from drying out and will also maintain a reasonable size anubias for the space.  Eight of the pangolino plantets are planted emersed in lava rock on the shelf of the river run.  With so many nice plantlets I couldn’t resist also planting some submersed – these are the five circled in cyan in the picture.  Tissue culture plants are something of a hybrid situation between emersed and submersed growth so we’ll see how those compare as the plants develop.

Removing Marsilea hirsuta

Posted on by Andy Pierce

The Marsilea hirsuta has been a wonderful carpeting plant, but it first went into the Fireplace Aquarium nearly 27 months ago and has started to become problematic.  Over long periods of time the marsilea can build up into a mass, I think as newer individual stems try to outgrow the existing carpet layer, so there had been a gradual creeping upwards.  Since the marsilea grows as single leaves at the end of a stem it can’t really be trimmed effectively.  It is possible to pull out interconnected strands as the plant propagates using runners, however, that tends to drag up surrounding marsilea where it is impossible for the uprooted material to be effectively put back down on the surface.  Still, two-plus years is a good run!

Removing aquarium plants can make a huge, but temporary, mess

(Pro tip:  don’t worry about it)

Pulling up the marsilea also released a huge pile of floating debris of all sizes.  Part of what might be happening here is that debris becomes trapped between the layer of carpet leaves and the substrate, being very difficult to remove whilst the carpeting plant is in place.  In my experience, even though so much rubbish suspended in the water column looks dramatic, it does not adversely affect any of the animal life, and indeed the fish, shrimp and snails seemed quite unperturbed.  I followed the uprooting with a large water change (80%+) which cleared quite a bit of suspended debris out, but even so things were pretty opaque.  Not to worry and no special measures needed though, the fine debris inevitably clears itself in a day or two.

Looking for replacement (aquarium) carpet

I’m going to let things settle for a bit and then probably put in some new carpeting plants where the marsilea was.  One consideration is that since the carpet will be inconveniently behind and underneath the mountain, regular trimming will be difficult or impossible.  That means some of the fast-growing carpets that need regular trimming to stay nice such as dwarf hairgrass (Eleocharis parvula) or Monte carlo (Micranthemum tweediei ‘Monte Carlo’) would not be good choices.  I’m also shy about plants that can get very leggy under lower light conditions.  One possibility would be to simply replant some fresh Marsilea hirsuta, or its smaller relative Marsilea crenata.  I’m also toying with giving Littorella uniflora another try, where the compare/contrast between growth under low tech (no injected CO2 gas) and high tech (with injected CO2 gas) conditions might be interesting.

Planting Anubias coffeefolia (emersed)

Posted on by Andy Pierce

The goal is to get epiphytes such as Anubias or Bucephalandra to grow emersed in the open-topped Shrimphaus exposed to normal room humidity.  There is a lot of internet opinion, most of which says “forget it”, but some people have managed to make a go of it.  My first try was Anubias nana ‘Coin’  which died gradually over a number of weeks as the submersed rhizome rotted away, but what didn’t happen was the leaves all instantly drying out, which lends some confidence.  I’m going to keep the rhizome out of the water going forward and inspired by a report of success with Anubias coffeefolia, I plumped for a pot of that.

Anubias coffeefolia has interesting leaf texture

The leaves of Anubias coffeefolia have a striking resemblance to those of the terrestrial coffee plant (naturally), and even though Aquadip lists this plant as ‘caffeefolia‘ you understand what they mean.  The plant arrived from Pro Shrimp in great condition, apart from one or two dead leaves which I trimmed off.  Removing the rockwool revealed a very healthy-looking root system.

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River run

Posted on by Andy Pierce

The initial concept for the aquaduct of the Shrimphaus was for water flowing over slate with epiphytic plants and mosses clinging to the slate under the water with leaves growing up out of the water.  That didn’t work out very well.  The underwater rhizome of the Anubias nana ‘Coin’ slowly rotted away, killing the plant.  The Christmas moss and the Bucephalandra pygmaea ‘Bukit Kelam’ didn’t look brilliant either.  Which leads to the new concept for emersed plants in the Shrimphaus…

Riverside planting
Riverside planting

Emersed plants on land

Whilst leaving a channel for water flow, land is built out of black lava rock on the slate shelf.  The lava rock is very porous and wicks up the water so staying continuously wet.  The epiphyte Anubias coffeefolia (replacing the Anubias nana ‘Coin’) and the Bucephalandra have their roots down amongst the lava rock staying wet, but the rhizome and leaves of both are in the open air.  The Christmas moss is simply placed on top of the lava rocks without any attempt at “planting”.  I have tried to keep things moist topside with irregular (when I think about it) misting to try to transition the plants gradually to standard indoor room humidity, but I’m not sure that’s actually necessary.  The wet lava rocks and moss will perhaps provide some degree of elevated localised humidity.

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Planting Vallisneria asiatica

Posted on by Andy Pierce

My wife suggested planting something “long and grasslike” so I straightaway thought of vallis.  There are several species of Vallisneria commonly available and I plumped for Vallisneria asiatica as sold by Aqua Essentials.  This is the second smallest vallis (Vallisneria torta being the smallest), and is listed as growing to 30 cm with pretty corkscrew twisted leaves that add interest.

I ordered two bunches, each of which came with four individual plants ranging in size from 18 to 23 cm.  These looked like they had been repacked from the original grower which I suspect was AquaFleur since the Aqua Essentials website picture is a match for the one in the AquaFleur catalog.  The idea is to make a “curtain of plants” up against the left side of the aquarium and whilst this was the original purpose for the Lysimachia nummularia ‘Aurea’, the lysimachia has proved to be too floppy to hold its upright position. I can say that upon planting the vallis, the otto catfish were immediately interested.

Vallis is considered a very easy plant to grow in aquarium, yet also has a reputation for being sensitive to liquid carbon. Initially I kept going with 1ml per 40L daily Easy Carbo I had always been using, but when the vallis showed signs of distress I stopped the treatment.  Stopping the daily dosing of liquid carbon is something I had been thinking about anyway for a while so this was a good excuse to try something new around fertiliser dosing.

Vallisneria asiatica fourty-five day update

After fourty-five days in the Fireplace Aquarium there have been some significant changes in the vallis.  Several of the plants towards the back have melted completely away.  Others have had some partial melting as well.  That said, there also appears to be some significant healthy looking new growth particularly in the front plants. Now that I look at it more closely, I think all of the original leaves are going to melt and be replaced by new, darker green, more solid leaves.  Vallis does not grow emersed, so this is not a transition from emersed to submerged growth, yet different water parameters may have much the same growth state transition effect.

Vallis is reputed to like a lot of light and the plants at the back tend to get shaded by the fast-growing ludwigia.  I did cut back the ludwigia quite drastically recently (it doesn’t mind that at all) so there will be a few weeks with essentially full illumination across the tank which will give the vallis an opportunity to do some consolidation and maybe build some new-growth height.

Transplanting Cryptocoryne lutea ‘Hobbit’

Posted on by Andy Pierce

They say Cryptocoryne lutea ‘Hobbit’ is a small crypt, but saying it and seeing it are two different things.  This is a really small crypt!  The original idea was to have a small plant to go in front of the Lobelia cardinalis ‘Dwarf’ to hide the rooty lower stems of the Lobelia without covering up the pretty bright green higher foliage.  The ‘Hobbit’ is listed as a maximum height of 5 cm which sounded about right, but now I think that’s too small.  The ‘Hobbit’ adapted to submerged growth easily, but after a good number of months still ranges from 2-3 cm in height.  Further, the dark brown/purple coloration of submerged form ‘Hobbit’ gets lost against the dark colour aquasoil making the ‘Hobbit’ hard to see.  To top it all off, the ‘Hobbit’ became overrun by the Marsilea hirsuta carpet, which is about as tall as the Hobbit and spreads much more aggressively.

I like the ‘Hobbit’ but I don’t think it’s fit for the original purpose in the spot.  Accordingly, I decided to try the “next size up” in crypts, Cryptocoryne parva.  That left open the question of what to do with the ‘Hobbit’ so I’ve moved the Hobbit to the front and centre of the tank.

Cryptocoryne species have a reputation for ‘melting’ if they get traumatised.  In this case they shed all their existing leaves and make it a do-over with fresh growth.  I’m hoping that doesn’t happen with these transplanted Hobbits.  The aquasoil only very loosely holds the roots such that there wasn’t much root tearing, and the replanting procedure was more a nestle-in-place rather than putting them in a hole and covering them with dirt.  I’ll keep them free of Marsilea invasion and the new venue has more illumination as well since it is more centrally located under the light and isn’t generally overshadowed by any of the taller species:  Lobelia, Ludwigia and Lysimachia.

Planting Cryptocoryne parva

Posted on by Andy Pierce

I picked up two pots of Cryptocoryne parva from Pro Shrimp as produced by Aquadip with the idea of putting in a crypt a little larger than the Cryptocoryne lutea ‘Hobbit’ in front of the Ludwigia palustris ‘Dwarf’.

The pots arrived promply and in excellent condition.  It was straightforward to remove the rockwool growth support using pinsettes, and I was then able to tease apart the two substantial plant masses into many smaller plantlets for individual planting.

My first thought was to plant the parva amongst the pre-existing Marsilea hirsuta and C. lutea ‘Hobbit’, but that rapidly proved impractical so instead I removed a substantial portion of the marsiliea which really was growing a little rampantly out of control, and I transplanted the ‘Hobbit’ to the front-centre of the aquarium to clear the ground for the parva.

The parva planted easily in the cleared ground and made a neat row right across the front of the aquarium.  There’s still a lot of cleared space behind the parva which I’ll leave open for now.

One week update

Well… “I’ll leave it open for now” didn’t last very long as a concept.  I picked up three more pots of parva, and because Pro Shimp was sold out (I got the last two pots), this time the parva was grown by AquaFleur and sold locally by Aqua Essentials.  I thought these new parva pots weren’t quite as nice as the first two:  a little smaller and showing some touches of raggedness, but still good.  The new parva plantlets filled in some of the thin patches in the front row and let me extend the planting back into the empty space behind.  Whilst that was happening, I removed all the leggy Lobelia cardinalis ‘Dwarf’ and replanted the tops to fresh things up, which will also mean more light for the parva.  The new parva looks smaller in the aquarium because it was a little smaller, but also because I made an effort to plant it a little more deeply than the parva in front.  AquaDip claims a maximum height of 10 cm for the parva, whilst AquaFleur says 5 cm.  We’ll see how that shakes out in time.

 

Cryptocoryne parva vs. Cryptocoryne lutea ‘Hobbit’

Emersed growth form C. parva vs. submerged growth form C. lutea 'Hobbit'
Emersed form C. parva vs. submerged form C. lutea ‘Hobbit’

For a long time, C. parva was the smallest available cryptocoryne but that changed in recent years with the introduction of C. lutea ‘Hobbit’ to the trade.  Here’s a comparison of the new C. parva emersed form plantlets with C. lutea ‘Hobbit’ plants that have been growing in the fully adapted submersed-form for at least three months.

The adapted ‘Hobbit’ is a dark brown/purple colour which is a strong contrast with the bright green colour of the emersed-form ‘Hobbit’.  The new parva is a similar bright green, but I expect the parva to stay roughly this same shade of green.  The maximum height of parva is listed as 10 cm, whilst the ‘Hobbit’ is listed as growing to 5 cm and indeed the new parva is already as tall as the ‘Hobbit’.  The eventual side-to-side comparison of the two will be interesting so hopefully the ‘Hobbit’ will emerge from its transplanting relatively untraumatised.

20 week C. parva vs. C. lutea ‘Hobbit’ update

After 20 weeks the parva has filled in nicely, but hasn’t gotten any taller – the leaves curve over so even at a length of 5 cm the height of the parva tops out at 3 cm.  The ‘Hobbit’ lists as being smaller than the parva and whilst this is true in terms of leaf length, the Hobbit leaves stand up straighter and also have an overall height of at most 3 cm.  Cryptocoryne parva has thin green narrow leaves – the emersed and submersed forms of parva look nearly identical – whilst the Hobbit has a wider bladed-shaped leaf in dark olive-brown.  These are both pretty great small crypts; personal preference might be the decider here rather than height and of course, you can have both!

Faster cryptocoryne adaptation

Posted on by Andy Pierce
Newly planted Cryptocoryne lutea 'Hobbit'
Before: emersed leaves cut off

Jurijs Jutjajevs’ (of Tropica) has a “pro tip” for avoiding ‘crypt melt’ and getting Cryptocoryne species more rapidly adapted to submerged growth in an aquarium:  cut off all the emersed form leaves when planting.  It’s quite a dramatic thing to get your new plants in from the vendor and then immediately cut all the leaves off, but I gave that a try with Cryptocoryne lutea ‘Hobbit’ and it’s time to report the results.

In the ‘before’ picture you can see the stumps of the newly planted row of ‘Hobbits’ to the immediate right of the Lobelia cardinalis ‘Dwarf’ and to the left of a mature row of fully adapted submerged form Hobbits up against the glass.  The idea is for the new plants to focus energy on developing submerged form leaves straight away since there are no residual emersed form leaves left.  Another upside is not having to clean up the decayed form of the emersed leaves as the plant transitions.

Cutting off Cryptocoryne ermersed form leaves really works!

Pre-trimmed Cryptocoryne lutea ‘Hobbit’ six weeks after planting

Jurijs’ tip worked beautifully!  The newly planted row of Hobbits have in just six weeks grown fully adapted submerged form leaves and are already more than half the size of the Hobbits planted six months ago that had the emersed form leaves left on.  The new Hobbits have adapted so well and so quickly that it’s hard to visually pick them out behind the row of older Hobbits.

Non-pre-trimmed Cryptocoryne lutea ‘Hobbit’ six weeks after planting

When the emersed form leaves are left on at planting, there are at six weeks a few fully submerged form leaves present, but most of the plant is still trying to give it a go with emersed form leaves.  That might be a good strategy in the wild where water levels might fluctuate above and below the plant, but it won’t work long-term at the bottom of an aquarium.

Great tip for all Cryptocoryne species (except Cryptocoryne parva)

Jurijs says the tip works for all species of crypts except for Cryptocoryne parva.  Parva doesn’t change its leaf form between emersed and submerged growth, so there’s no need to ‘help’ it transition.

Special note:  also don’t try this with Cryptocoryne species grown in tissue culture form.

Planting Lysimachia nummularia ‘Aurea’

Posted on by Andy Pierce

Golden creeping Jenny in an aquarium

Also known as ‘moneywort’, the golden form of creeping Jenny came up in the weekly sales email from Aqua Essentials and even though I know impulse buying isn’t a good way to go with a planted aquarium, I was looking for a plant that gets to around 30 cm and the golden colour sounded appealing (and who doesn’t like 40% off list price?) so I picked up a pot.

The first surprise was the large amount of emersed leafy growth – six inches.  I don’t have any experience with this plant so wasn’t sure whether the emersed growth would simply rot away when submerged in the aquarium, in which case prophylatic vigorous trimming might be in order, or whether as a marshy plant the emersed growth would be ready for full submersion.  I decided to trim off any obviously rotted portions and the lower leaves near the roots so I could plant the stems to good depth, but otherwise to leave the emersed growth in place; this can always be trimmed off later after planting if not doing well.

The second surprise was that after prising away the rockwool growth support, there were nine quite vigorous looking individual stems.  The catalogs never tell you how many individual plantlets to expect from a single pot and nine is on the high end in my experience.  With a good amount of stems, planting in a row up against a side wall of the aquarium aiming for a “golden curtain” type of effect seemed feasible, so starting at the back on the left side I planted in a forward row as close to the tank wall as reasonably possible.

I’m looking forward to seeing how this new plant behaves.  The Fireplace Aquarium has developed into a multi-coloured live plant display with various shades of light green, dark red, blue/green, dark green, darkish purple and whitish foliage, and now hopefully golden yellow.

Removing golden creeping jenny from the aquarium

Lysimachia nummularia 'Aurea' (golden creeping jenny) after 11 months
removed after 11 months

The golden creeping jenny never really got its feet under it in the Fireplace Aquarium.  Mostly for a very long time it sat there without any new growth at all – not dying but not thriving either.  The stems aren’t rigid enough to give upright growth but would swish around with the current, so the ‘golden curtain’ concept didn’t really work (there has been more success in this regard using Vallisneria asiatica).  After months and months of very modest progress, of all the stems initially planted ony one remained, but with this one the golden creeping jenny did seem to gain some growth momentum as it got towards the top of the tank.  This might reflect a high light requirement for this plant.  In any event, since the plant wasn’t behaving ‘on theme’ and not really thriving either, I removed the jenny and planted it outside in a planter box.  We’ll give this plant a go at a terrestrial existence.

Planting Cryptocoryne lutea ‘Hobbit’

Posted on by Andy Pierce

How to avoid crypt  melt

I’m really liking the look of Cryptocoryne lutea ‘Hobbit’ in the front of the Fireplace Aquarium and it might be nice to put in a second row but it has taken this slow growing crypt more than four months to really get going.  Is there a way to speed up the transition from the emersed growth form of the plant as received from the shop to the submerged form it will take in the aquarium?  I previously noticed Jurijs Jutjajevs’ “pro tip” to simply cut all the emersed form leaves off and only plant the roots and crown of the plant.  Leaves that have already been removed can’t melt.  I wasn’t brave enough to try that last time, but this time, BRAVERY UNLOCKED.

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