There are several species of vallis available in the trade: spiralis, australis ‘curly’, spiralis ‘tortifolia’, australis ‘gigantea’, nana, tortifolia and asiatica, with leaf lengths ranging from the longest at 1.5m (gigantea) to the shortest at 20 cm (tortifolia). Vallisneria asiatica, also known as twisted vallis, is the second shortest topping out at 30 cm and […]
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Aquatic plants, either submersed or emersed: species notes, growth, trimming, planting, algae/plant interactions, and care.
It’s been difficult with the emersed plants on the Shrimphaus shelf. Some descriptions of the tribulations below. Growing on the slate surface directly (doesn’t work) First I tried simply tying Chirstmas moss down in the flow on the riverbed to see if they would grab onto the river bottom, but that didn’t really work – […]
Read more →I’m becoming more fond of Cryptocoryne as submersed aquatic plants. They come in a wide variety of colours, sizes and textures, tolerate low light and are pretty much maintenance free. I always plant these after cutting off the emersed leaves to promote faster Cryptocoryne adaptation to submersed form growth whilst avoiding ‘crypt melt’. Cryptocoryne walkeri […]
Read more →‘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 […]
Read more →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 […]
Read more →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 […]
Read more →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. […]
Read more →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 […]
Read more →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 […]
Read more →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 […]
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