Lloyd Parkes
Seedling
- Joined
- 9 Mar 2015
- Messages
- 4
Hi all, I introduced myself here and look forward to contributing: http://www.ukaps.org/forum/threads/hi-everybody-new-poster-from-kent.37917/#post-409819
I've had fun growing this fantastic plant over the last 8 months and has become one of my favourites. I've looked on here and other forums but haven't managed to find much info about this so wanted to share my experiences so far. I started off planting two of them quite central in my tank under 2 inches of cat litter, a layer of sphagnum moss peat and 2-3 root tabs made from miracle grow slow release food. They got 160w of t5 lighting 8 hours a day. This is how they looked after about a month as i've circled:
This is after about 2 months:
This is after about 3 months when the biggest of the two started sending out these shoots. This was quite unexpected but was a nice surprise to an already beautiful plant.
Some of the leaves were now much bigger than my outstretched hands and looked amazing. Heres a close up of one:
So I let this red looking shoot reach the surface which then opened up and spread out like a lily pad. As soon as one reached the surface another was then sent out, some were a darker shade of red which would stay like this for a few days before some of them would start turning green. Heres some pics of the different shades:
After about 5-6 months the biggest plant sent out another shoot that looked different which then reached the surface and started forming little flower heads. After a week or so they started flowering:
After a few days the leaves dropped off and i noticed the bottom of this plant shoot was just under the water. Well about a week later small roots started appearing and looks of new leaves were forming on what looks like new plantlets:
As you can see under the water with some of the holes in the plants my siamese algae eaters suddenly started taking a liking for the new shoots. Luckily some are still reaching the surface untouched though.
The other Harbich sent its own flower shoot to the surface with proceeded to spread out of the tank and form 6 of its own planlets that flowered.
So today I have cut this back and placed all the little plants at the waters surface hoping they will send out roots.
Does anybody else have much experience growing this plant? Next step would be planting the rooted plants in the substrate and seeing how they do.
This is how my tank looks today having cut back alot of the big leaves blocking the light to other plants:
I look forward to hearing others experiences growing this plant and hope you enjoy my pictures
Btw this is 5 Foot by 2' tank.
Lloyd
I've had fun growing this fantastic plant over the last 8 months and has become one of my favourites. I've looked on here and other forums but haven't managed to find much info about this so wanted to share my experiences so far. I started off planting two of them quite central in my tank under 2 inches of cat litter, a layer of sphagnum moss peat and 2-3 root tabs made from miracle grow slow release food. They got 160w of t5 lighting 8 hours a day. This is how they looked after about a month as i've circled:
This is after about 2 months:
This is after about 3 months when the biggest of the two started sending out these shoots. This was quite unexpected but was a nice surprise to an already beautiful plant.
Some of the leaves were now much bigger than my outstretched hands and looked amazing. Heres a close up of one:
So I let this red looking shoot reach the surface which then opened up and spread out like a lily pad. As soon as one reached the surface another was then sent out, some were a darker shade of red which would stay like this for a few days before some of them would start turning green. Heres some pics of the different shades:
After about 5-6 months the biggest plant sent out another shoot that looked different which then reached the surface and started forming little flower heads. After a week or so they started flowering:
After a few days the leaves dropped off and i noticed the bottom of this plant shoot was just under the water. Well about a week later small roots started appearing and looks of new leaves were forming on what looks like new plantlets:
As you can see under the water with some of the holes in the plants my siamese algae eaters suddenly started taking a liking for the new shoots. Luckily some are still reaching the surface untouched though.
The other Harbich sent its own flower shoot to the surface with proceeded to spread out of the tank and form 6 of its own planlets that flowered.
So today I have cut this back and placed all the little plants at the waters surface hoping they will send out roots.
Does anybody else have much experience growing this plant? Next step would be planting the rooted plants in the substrate and seeing how they do.
This is how my tank looks today having cut back alot of the big leaves blocking the light to other plants:
I look forward to hearing others experiences growing this plant and hope you enjoy my pictures
Btw this is 5 Foot by 2' tank.
Lloyd
