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Ammannia Pedicatella 'Golden'

E

erwin123

Member
Joined
4 Mar 2021
Messages
1,351
Location
Singapore
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Plantnoobdude's 12G Softwater My 12G softwater


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Hufsa's Consistency Deficiency

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My 90P High Light


As requested by Maq I'm starting a new thread dedicated to this lovely yellow plant.
Looking at Journals updated in the past few weeks, I found that the following tanks have the "Golden." Journals are good because regular updates show the 'ups and downs' of trying to grow the Golden (and believe me, there are plenty of ups and downs trying to grow this plant! :arghh:), as opposed to a single 'instagram perfect' photo of the Golden. Pls contribute your photos/journals if I missed them out....

While I envisage that Maq will want to dive in to the deep end of chemistry and discuss ratios and Marschner, I'm also totally happy to hear non-scientific views on how we can grow this plant better. Or maybe just post photos of the Golden in your tank! Yes its prone to algae on the lowest leaves - but don't let algae prevent you from posting photos!

No need to back up anything you say with a reference to a phd thesis, sharing your actual experience growing this plant is also very valuable 🙂
 
Appreciate this thread :thumbup:

So far this plant hasnt liked my tank very much. New leaves twist and curl and growth is almost non existent. The only useful bit of information I have been able to gather from my tank is that in my case, with inert substrate, placing new stems in a pot of Tropica aqua soil doesn't seem to be enough to help the plant with whatever issue it is having, or what it doesn't like about my tank. Growth shows the exact same symptoms. Therefore I suspect some parameter of my water column (CO2, nutrients, GH, KH etc) is not to its liking.
I have one stem which is growing uncurled, this one is very heavily shaded by other stems, and I suspect the low light it receives is slowing the growth of this stem down so much that it is able to work around the issue. Unfortunately I accidentally pulled the stem out while replanting a neighboring stem, and now that the roots have been disturbed, the new leaves have started to curl.

@plantnoobdude , you used to have some issues with this plant but now it grows quite well for you, can you share the changes you implemented?
 
erwin123 said:
While I envisage that Maq will want to dive in to the deep end of chemistry and discuss ratios and Marschner, I'm also totally happy to hear non-scientific views
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Good prediction. I do believe it has to do with Na : K : Mg : Ca ratio. But I haven't got much to say on this particular Ammannia because I keep just one bunch of small, in-vitro plants, only for a month. For now, I can only say that they seem to be quite indifferent to pH - I keep them in three tanks with pH ranging from 5.5 to 8.0. In this, they behave like A. crassicaulis which I tested this spring.
Perhaps we should keep in sight experience with other Ammanias, too.
 
_Maq_ said:
Good prediction. I do believe it has to do with Na : K : Mg : Ca ratio. But I haven't got much to say on this particular Ammannia because I keep just one bunch of small, in-vitro plants, only for a month. For now, I can only say that they seem to be quite indifferent to pH - I keep them in three tanks with pH ranging from 5.5 to 8.0. In this, they behave like A. crassicaulis which I tested this spring.
Perhaps we should keep in sight experience with other Ammanias, too.
Click to expand...
the other Ammannias I've grown are easy compared to Pedicatella. I've never had stunting in any of them.
  1. Ammannia Capitellata - easy giant green stem - had to remove, grew too big.
  2. Ammannia Gracilis - easy to grow it 'green', but not easy to turn it pink like internet photos (or are the colours pumped up? 🙂) Its's still in my low tech tank doing ok as a green plant with maybe a little bit of colour.
  3. Ammannia Senegelansis - easy giant stem with orange top leaves - one stem is still in my 90P but really takes up too much real estate - I place it in the bottom left corner just below the Lily Pipe outflow since I got nothing else to grow in that corner.
 
Hufsa said:
Appreciate this thread :thumbup:

So far this plant hasnt liked my tank very much. New leaves twist and curl and growth is almost non existent. The only useful bit of information I have been able to gather from my tank is that in my case, with inert substrate, placing new stems in a pot of Tropica aqua soil doesn't seem to be enough to help the plant with whatever issue it is having, or what it doesn't like about my tank. Growth shows the exact same symptoms. Therefore I suspect some parameter of my water column (CO2, nutrients, GH, KH etc) is not to its liking.
I have one stem which is growing uncurled, this one is very heavily shaded by other stems, and I suspect the low light it receives is slowing the growth of this stem down so much that it is able to work around the issue. Unfortunately I accidentally pulled the stem out while replanting a neighboring stem, and now that the roots have been disturbed, the new leaves have started to curl.

@plantnoobdude , you used to have some issues with this plant but now it grows quite well for you, can you share the changes you implemented?
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, I don’t have much in terms of helpful advice to make changes in your tank. In my tank leaving it alone seems to be the best method instead of replanting.
I recently trimmed a few stems and have replanted them, I am interested to see how they do after replanting with no roots.
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If it is of interest, my current dosing is as followed.

Ca:Mg:K
20:8:4
Dosed at water change.

1-2ppm N
0.4-0.8 PO4
0.025Fe from dtpa. And other micros in very Low amounts.
Above is dosed Weekly, split into 7 doses.

This plant seems to be completely starvation proof, never seen one hint of deficiency no matter what the dosing.
 
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Here is how it looks today.
The small stems on the left are side shoots. That grew in while the tall stems were blocking most of the light. Stems on the right are the ones I replanted.
Less light seems to be better for these plants as it makes the systems inefficiencies unseen…. Some what quoting @JoshP12 i think.
When one lythracaea so is happy in my tank, they all seem to do well. Just trying to find a middle ground between ammannia, rotala and weedy hygros and ludwigia.
Perhaps my super Low micros are not to its liking, 0.025 Fe weekly. 20 times lower than EI recommendations of 0.5ppm. Can’t believe at one time I was dosing 1ppm Fe weekly….
 
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_Maq_ said:
Good prediction. I do believe it has to do with Na : K : Mg : Ca ratio. But I haven't got much to say on this particular Ammannia because I keep just one bunch of small, in-vitro plants, only for a month. For now, I can only say that they seem to be quite indifferent to pH - I keep them in three tanks with pH ranging from 5.5 to 8.0. In this, they behave like A. crassicaulis which I tested this spring.
Perhaps we should keep in sight experience with other Ammanias, too.
Click to expand...
Any pictures? Your insight maybe helpful to hufsa since she keeps inert substrate as well, though she does inject co2.
 
These are some pictures from happi.

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He says he followed Marschner numbers to achieve these results, here are the following in ppm
3.14ppm N (2 ppm NH4 + 7 ppm NO3)
2.14pm K,
1.08ppm Ca,
0.43ppm Mg,
0.42ppm P (= 1.3 ppm H2PO4)
0.38ppm S (= 1.12 ppm SO4),
0.41ppm Cl,
0.06ppm Na

He dosed in this ratio from 1-2ppm Nitrogen weekly. The above was dosed into pure ro water.
On top of this he used 0.02-0.03 Fe from Tenso micro clone.
 
plantnoobdude said:
View attachment 191440
Here is how it looks today.
The small stems on the left are side shoots. That grew in while the tall stems were blocking most of the light. Stems on the right are the ones I replanted.
Less light seems to be better for these plants as it makes the systems inefficiencies unseen…. Some what quoting @JoshP12 i think.
When one lythracaea so is happy in my tank, they all seem to do well. Just trying to find a middle ground between ammannia, rotala and weedy hygros and ludwigia.
Perhaps my super Low micros are not to its liking, 0.025 Fe weekly. 20 times lower than EI recommendations of 0.5ppm. Can’t believe at one time I was dosing 1ppm Fe weekly….
Click to expand...
This is the kind of observation - in my opinion - that we need to obtain sexy plants.

From a probability standpoint, I’d say ya probably light but also if it was in the “front” of the flow pattern, co2 accessibility.

Also, why did that plant side shoot yet maybe another did not? Something about it’s placement was ideal. Could even be substrate condition.

small edit: with that more light however, with everything else in line, you will get the coloration you want. It will be harder to squeeze out nice colours with less light.
 
nice, i'm impressed that A.gracilis/ golden grow in hard water (gh 21, kh : 11)

I've read somewhere that the gracilis may look different depending hardness, don't know if it's true, gracilis is really deficiency resistant
 
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Hanuman said:
I will add that the last picture, the one from Raj Mahakul, was grown under EI levels at 500+ PAR.
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the last pic (4th pic), the leaves are curling more than the 3rd pic and also compare to plantnoobdude's pics. imagine how much nicer they would be if he reduced the dosing a bit. But if it was a farm tank to grow them as fast as possible for sale, I appreciate why EI was used. 😎
 
erwin123 said:
the last pic (4th pic), the leaves are curling more than the 3rd pic and also compare to plantnoobdude's pics. imagine how much nicer they would be if he reduced the dosing a bit. But if it was a farm tank to grow them as fast as possible for sale, I appreciate why EI was used. 😎
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No, that tank was experimental and had the objective to show that EI worked under extreme conditions. According to Raj, who is a highly respected aquarist, all the plants grew fine and to quote him "they grew better with nicer colors and leaf morphs according to the tank conditions".

I have to agree that the form of the plant in the pictures above look nicer. Now, I wouldn't be too quick on assuming that the curling is due to EI dosing and I am not sure how you came to such conclusion. Could be some other parameter. Could be the high light, hardness maybe the temperature, I don't know or simply that the tops were just replanted. This often happens when the plant is trimmed and tops replanted and I would bet it also happened to the above tanks. In fact you can see by the size, that the plants above have been growing undisturbed. Truth is that I have seen that plant also curl with lower light and under non-EI dosing. Many people complain about this plant stunting and curling under a variety of conditions so EI here seem irrelevant and unfounded. Simply look at @Hufsa tank which is technically not EI by any stretch of the imagination yet see how ammannia is doing for her, excluding the one that is heavily shadowed.
 
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@Hanuman could you post a second reply instead of adding such a large portion of text through edit a day later? It would be helpful because then those who have set the thread on watch will get a notification that more have been added to the thread :thumbup:

Hanuman said:
Truth is that I have seen that plant also curl with lower light and under non-EI dosing. Many people complain about this plant stunting and curling under a variety of conditions so EI here seem irrelevant and unfounded. Simply look at @Hufsa tank which is technically not EI by any stretch of the imagination yet see how ammannia is doing for her, excluding the one that is heavily shadowed.
Click to expand...
I partially agree with this, I think our very basic concepts of EI and Lean is only a part of the picture, and not nuanced enough. There is pretty obviously more to this plant than that. My tank is also experimental in that i am using inert substrate, this is not commonly used with the most challenging plants. Since Golden curls for me in both the sand and in soil cup, it seems in that in my tank the problem does not lie there. Data points like that (however unscientific they may be) contribute to our wider understanding. I wish more people who grow this plant would chime in with their data points. Maybe eventually a pattern will emerge, and we will all have learned something.
Its too easy to get lost in bickering and us vs them
 
I'll be providing an update in my journal tomorrow, but just to add here that good CO2 is important. I did a proper pH profile a few days ago that my pH drop is only 0.9! If it has been like that for the past few weeks I guess I've discovered why my Golden is not doing well. (I was perhaps lulled into complacency by the other plants doing ok)
I've since adjusted CO2 to get a 1.2pH drop and there are new shoots coming out of some stunted stems.
 
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