What happened to my Tiger Lotus?

[chinwag]

Hi,

I've been keeping a Tiger Lotus in a jar, when it arrived it had split from the bulb so I planted both as advised by the seller, all good.

Some duckweed and more recently (a week or so) frogbit in the jar, and some Monte Carlo as well, all doing pretty well.

The Tiger Lotus looked great (to me at least!), here's a photo of it from 10 days ago.

Bulb is putting out shoots, plant has nice red leaves, happy me.

There seemed to be a tiny bit of algae but nothing major.

Suddenly all the leaves fell off and floated to the top of the water, duckweed seems to be suspended rather than floating.

I top the water up daily but only with a spray bottle, this weekend I added more than usual as the Tiger Lotus was approaching the surface.

No major disturbances, dosed with a little profitio, literally a drop, other than that not a thing changed.

I'm baffled. Any idea what might have happened?

 

[chinwag]

I've just been taking a close look at the jar and actually there is some brown fluffy algae on the stem of the Tiger Lotus that's missing it's leaves. Would that be enough to upset the balance this much though?

Thanks.

 

[chinwag]

I think I figured this out - having said nothing had changed, my GF walked in and asked why the light was so much closer to the Tiger Lotus!

Without realising I'd moved the jar nearer to the light and think that was enough the mess everything up.

Changed the water out, less light, cleaned off the alge, removed some duckweed and pulled out the bulb, moved that into another jar for now. My duckweed is now floating, water is clear, early days but everything seems happy for now.

I appreciate also that this is not an amazing specimen as far as these plants go, but for me the growth was looking good so I was gutted to lost it all!

There's still a little bit of 'fluff' at the base of the plant that just won't budge - I'm hoping it's part of the plant? it really won't come off!

 

[techfool]

I wonder if it will dump all its leaves if it's not getting enough nutrition to save what's stored in the bulb. Or is going through a dormant phase?

 

[chinwag]

The wierd thing is that this plant was seperate from the bulb when it arrived, so I had a healthy plant that dumped its leaves, and a bulb that I thought would do nothing, putting out fresh shoots - both in the same jar!

I briefly wondered if the bulb took all the nutrients out of the water, can that happen?

The bulb now has a definite leaf, with tiny bubbles all over it, and the plant (in the original jar) has its one remaining leaf!

 

[zozo]

The Tiger lotus or actualy Nypmhaea zenkeri, is a night flowering tropical lily.. The worship warm and rather medium to high light invironments, it doesn't necessarily need CO², but, since medium to high light in a small water body is an invitation to get uncontrolled algae growth, than CO² is highly recomended for this plant to thrive in an aquarium. Also to keep it growing submersed leaves, people tend too cut of any developing floaters, a typical lily propperty is stop making submersed form leaves once it has sufficient floaters. Floaters get CO² from the atmosphere and makes it grow more healthy. So cutting the floaters off and not adding presurized CO² is rather counter productive.

This all makes it a tricky plant to grow, since it is a sun-worshipper (Light) who likes it warm at the same time and a somewhat nutrient rich soil to realy thrive and all should rather be met. The sudden leaf shedding could be that the temperatur is to low, especialy when it replanted freshly from the lfs, most LFS keep the water rather at the high temperature range averagely + 28°C is kept. Because higher temperature slows down certain parasites e.g. Ich. And having such high temps gives you somewhat longer travel time in the bag. Anyway this sudden temp change contributes negatively to the transplant shock plants go through and make it shed all the older leaves. Also not enough light does the same, having enough light but to low temperature slows the plant down and makes it susceptible to algae.

To make this plant thrive you should try to stabilize at least the light and temperature.. Try to keep it at a 24°C / 25°C and find the correct light intensity to keep the lily happy ad the algae out.. I guess this is going to be extremely difficult in a small jar.

The bulb stores energy, so it can grow new leaves from it without having much roots and no ferts.. But once it has a few more leaves it becomes hungry and needs some food to get the tuber growing a bit fatter. Putting a clay tab beneat the tuber is sufficient for a start.

Maybe with a jar, such a reptile tank heat mat can be of any help to keep up the temp 24/7 in the jar on top.

 

[Chubbs]

the Lilly will separate from the bulb eventually anyway. I have two in my tank, one still has it’s bulb and the other I removed months ago. Both very healthy. They need lots of nutrients / food as they grow incredibly fast. My tank is 50cm/60cm tall and if allowed to, within a day a new shoot can appear and reach just below the surface. It takes a couple weeks for that new shoot to initially appear, but once it has the resources it needs (maybe it stores them and builds them up?) it really grows.

The brown fur, without seeing yours, I think is actually quite natural. The stems have small hairs on them any way, so this could simply be that. I’ve found that if a stem has died that it becomes hollow and fragile, rather than mouldy or algae ridden. At the base of the tiger Lilly with a bulb this is also covered in small brown hairs, that could easily be thought of as algae. Maybe it is, but it’s been on mine for about a year and hasn’t spread to any where else.

They love light, so I don’t think the issue was simply the lamp. The lamp being closer means it has more light but also it’s demand for other resources goes up. So that’s maybe where your imbalance has occurred. You could try dosing an extra drop to see if that helps, or add some slow release fertiliser near the bulb. You can make your own root tabs by buying gelatine tabs and miracle grow (osmocote in the US) it’s the exact same contents as the TNC tabs but cost pennies per tab not pounds.

 

[chinwag]

Thanks for the replies and all the info @zozo and @Chubbs, much appreciated.

@Chubbs - that's some serious growth rate!

I think the algae is definitely a result of the small water volume and increased light as @zozo suggests, but I hadn't considered the extra light might lead to a demand for more resources by the plant. The whole setup (if you can call it that!) definitely got unbalanced in a big way, very quickly.

I have some larger containers now and a slightly better setup, plus I dug out some cheap heatmats and a thermostat that I had knocking around, so I'll do some experimenting.

On the plus side, now they're in seperate jars I can make changes in one only and see what affect that has. Currently the original plant still looks pretty sad, the bulb is going great guns.

Thanks again - I'll post an update once there's something to share!