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How big can an Echinodorus rosette get?

Wookii

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13 Nov 2019
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I have a couple of Echinodorus in my tank that both grow really well and continuously put out new leaves. Being a rosette plant, these of course appear to continuously grow from the centre pushing the old leaves further out and increasing the diameter of the rosette at the base.

Of course I remove the larger older leaves when they get too big for the tank, but it just had me wondering, assuming unlimited access to nutrients and no removal of the outer leaves, how much further would this kind of growth go if left unchecked? Will it literally keep going until the base of the rosette fills the base of the tank and you have a half a metre diameter plant, or does the plant reach a natural limit where the outer leaves get pushed too far from the main roots and die off naturally keeping the plant at a limited size?
 
Interesting idea. I guess in the wild their leaves would become damaged/eaten and naturally be removed. In our tanks as you say, maintenance, nutrients, light and space might be the only limiting factors (assuming no fish/snails that eat them are present).
I guess if no one else has tested this theory, for the rest of the planted aquarium hobby it falls to you to test :lol:
 
One of mine grew to maybe 10cm in diameter where the roots sprout from, then started to divide into multiple growing points, I think I got 3 or 4 good sized plants when I finally got around to divide it. Not sure what triggered this though, the plant was growing in my paludarium sump with the majority of its leaves above the water (Marshlands), maybe the original growing point was damaged and that prompted the division? I'm not sure, it did make an attempt to cover the entire base though :)
 
One of mine grew to maybe 10cm in diameter where the roots sprout from, then started to divide into multiple growing points, I think I got 3 or 4 good sized plants when I finally got around to divide it. Not sure what triggered this though, the plant was growing in my paludarium sump with the majority of its leaves above the water (Marshlands), maybe the original growing point was damaged and that prompted the division? I'm not sure, it did make an attempt to cover the entire base though :)

That's impressive. It does make sense that the plant would eventually turn to pushing our daughter plants rather than just continuing to expand radially.

By the way I'm following your thread already - I love that fully planted moss wall, its epic, my future dream tank will be a long tank with a high back to do something very similar.
 
That's impressive. It does make sense that the plant would eventually turn to pushing our daughter plants rather than just continuing to expand radially.
You might be onto something there, I try to remove all but one flower spike per plant so that the leaf quality doesn't suffer, maybe it decided that "I'm not having any more of this, let's divide from the base and see how he handles that".
By the way I'm following your thread already - I love that fully planted moss wall, its epic, my future dream tank will be a long tank with a high back to do something very similar.
Go for it :) I find the paludarium to probably be the easiest of my tanks to maintain, despite its larger size. My main advice would be to not make the tank to narrow front to back, mine is "only" 60cm and I could really use 20-30cm more to improve air circulation and have some mid-ground plants.
 
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