# Flowering aquatic plants



## Bart Hazes (17 Oct 2017)

Over the last few weeks I have been pleasantly surprised by one plant after the other starting to produce flowers in my indoors aquariums. Right now 5 different plants (water hyacinth, frogbit, water lettuce, Brazilian pennywort and Echinodorus 'Frans Stoffels') have flowers. The frogbit seems to have separate and quite different male and female flowers.

I put pictures and story together in a blog at http://biodives.com/blog/?p=200


----------



## Daveslaney (17 Oct 2017)

Great blog Bart.
Hows the bright light no ferts tank doing?


----------



## dw1305 (18 Oct 2017)

Hi all,





Bart Hazes said:


> The frogbit seems to have separate and quite different male and female flowers.


They do. 

There is a discussion in <"Flowering Frogbit"> from 2012.  Since that post I find that the only ever have female flowers in the tanks, but up in the glasshouse I get both male and female flowers, and that the plants are monoecious, but with separate male and female flowers on the same plant (like a _Begonia_).

We have a few flowering plant threads <"Flowering Tiger Lotus">, <"Windswept Eternity"> & <"Floating flowering plants">.

Kris Weinhold ("Guitarfish") also <"has a blog"> with some aquarium plants in flower.

cheers Darrel


----------



## zozo (18 Oct 2017)

Lovely isn't it??. That Echinodorus, when it is done flowering you can cut off the complete flower stalk at the substrate and leave it floating in the water. And each flower cluster will develop a new plantlet with roots rather soon. If you don't cut it it will deloped only new leaves at maybe 1 ore 2 flower clusters without any roots, till it touches the water or damp soil than roots start to form.


----------



## Bart Hazes (19 Oct 2017)

Daveslaney said:


> Great blog Bart.
> Hows the bright light no ferts tank doing?


The experiment has been terminated. Conclusion was that bright light is sufficient to get them to grow but you need a good algae eating squadron to keep algae in check. For me the amano shrimp were not much help whereas the Siamese algae eaters lived up to their reputation. However, the SAE were also serious competitors for the slower feeding checkerboard cichlids so I decided to cut light output, sell the SAE, and focus on the cichlids. The Eichhornia diversifolia actually turns out to grow pretty well in low light, even quite low light, so don't know why I saw that listed as a 'hi-tech plant'


----------



## Bart Hazes (19 Oct 2017)

dw1305 said:


> Hi all,They do.
> 
> There is a discussion in <"Flowering Frogbit"> from 2012.  Since that post I find that the only ever have female flowers in the tanks, but up in the glasshouse I get both male and female flowers, and that the plants are monoecious, but with separate male and female flowers on the same plant (like a _Begonia_).
> 
> ...


Thanks for the links. BigTom's flowers are same as mine with lots of interesting comments on that post. The female flowers hang around for a while while the male flower is short lived and may go undetected. Some pollen fell on a frogbit leaf and I tore it off to 'fertilize' some of the female flowers. Not sure if it will work but doesn't hurt to try.
I have some Heteranthera zosterifolia starting to emerge so perhaps they will also give me some of the nice flowers that Tim Harrison was showing.
The water hyacinth took some time to make a bud on a long vertical stalk, then it opened partially on day one (showing the purple petals but not yet the stamen/pistil inside), on day two the flowers opened up to allow fertilization but at the end of the day the stem carrying the flower started to bend 90 degree to a horizontal angle, on day three the stem bend further to 180 degree pushing the flower underwater. That also happened with my one earlier water hyacinth flower as if further seed development is meant to happen submerged.


----------



## Bart Hazes (19 Oct 2017)

zozo said:


> Lovely isn't it??. That Echinodorus, when it is done flowering you can cut off the complete flower stalk at the substrate and leave it floating in the water. And each flower cluster will develop a new plantlet with roots rather soon. If you don't cut it it will deloped only new leaves at maybe 1 ore 2 flower clusters without any roots, till it touches the water or damp soil than roots start to form.



The scapes didn't have plantlets initially (although some had a stray leaf or two) when they were fully emerged. Now that they are touching the water they are starting to form plantlets with roots, even though still attached to the mother plant. Is there an advantage for cutting them off. In nature they would remain attached until the stalk decayed so I am planning to let them intact a while longer until all the plantlets are harvesting size.


----------



## zozo (19 Oct 2017)

Bart Hazes said:


> Now that they are touching the water they are starting to form plantlets with roots, even though still attached to the mother plant. Is there an advantage for cutting them off. In nature they would remain attached until the stalk decayed so I am planning to let them intact a while longer until all the plantlets are harvesting size.



This is my Echi cultivar in it's current state, it's little over 2 years old now.. It's a kleiner bär Jugle star No2 from Dennerle, it's a crossbreed from E. parviflorus, E. barthii en E. uruguayensis as far as i know.




You'rs also is a Hybrid i think, looking at it's name giving, but yet couldn't find what it's all crossed with. A guess it's crossed to make 'm more hardy and eassier to grow also emersed, most non hybridized Echi's arent so  easy to grow emersed in lower humidities. But since it's a bog plant in nature and striktly grow marginal yoy like won't find them in submersed form very much at least not the ones that grow rather big. So i'm also not so confident if you will find a flowering submersed form large Echinodorus in nature. The flower stalks from this one just keep comming i'd cut of maybe 6 already. In this form they grow about 2 to 3 times the lenght of the leaves. If i leave them on, yet i didn't get more than 2 new rootless plantlets on the flower stalk. I guess it's a energy flow restriction in the flowerstalk, but that's a long shot guess in my observation. While the plantlet slowly grows bigger the stalk bends and falls over, planted in a box like an aquarium it obviously can't realy do that, but in nature it would rather soon touch the water or dirt and it'll root and grow a bigger plant. Than it likely will get a energy flow from 2 directions and all flower clusters in between will start forming new plantlets as well. Since i'm already at about my 10th flower stalk i did cut off a few and threw them this summer in the garden in my bathtub pond. ANd now i have about 8 or 9 young rooted Echinidorus plantlets each flower clusters grows one like that much sooner. 

That's how the Kleiner Bär does, so Frans Stoffels might do it slightly different.

But they are remarkable plants, if a submersed leaf reaches the surface and sticks out this part dries out very quickly maybe in one day. If you do not cut it off more follow and than it seems these leaves singnal to the rhizome it's at the surface and it stops growing submersed form leaves. It will suddenly start to shoot up long leafstalks with very small leaf on top, once this emerses it grows bigger and it does this remarkably fast.  Also if a flower cluster touches teh water and grows a rooted plantlet, it shoots long thick roots down to the substrate and pulls itself down to it. Makes yu wonder how this plant communicates with it's surrounding. The roots that sense they are in substrate reverse to shrinking and go pulling..


----------



## zozo (19 Oct 2017)

Seems this plant senses it's surrounding, i have a hunch my flower stacks keep growing in lenght because it's in a box, because the plant wants to propagate it keeps putting energy in this flowerstalk to reach water or dirt. i have flowerstalks up to 180cm long, with only 5 flower clusters to it. And it keeps getting longer if i leave 'm on. In nature they would have reached dirt and rooted for long time already


----------



## AverageWhiteBloke (19 Oct 2017)

Bart Hazes said:


> The experiment has been terminated. Conclusion was that bright light is sufficient to get them to grow but you need a good algae eating squadron to keep algae in check. For me the amano shrimp were not much help whereas the Siamese algae eaters lived up to their reputation.



I found the same thing with Amanos Bart, they will always take the path of least resistance as most creatures do in nature. looking to spend the least amount of energy for the maximum gain in food. I would imagine in a Shrimp only tank where you have some level of control over the feeding they could make in impact on algae but in a shrimp and fish mixed system where you need to feed the fish they will always just take fish food left over. Quite funny watching them though, mine will hang around in a group where some food is and wait for a small piece to break off, snatch it and then spread out and all stand with a little bit each equidistant apart munching on it. Only takes a little crumb for them to spend hours to break it down and in that time they're not grazing.The fish swim round them thinking should I snatch it off them but seem unsure whether the shrimp might be possibly a bit dangerous. Still handy addition in an aquarium for rummaging in the gravel for left over food particles though. On the other hand I recently had an experience where my fish didn't get fed for five weeks and the Amano totally stripped the tank of all algae and even made a start on some fine leaved plants that weren’t doing so well.



Bart Hazes said:


> The Eichhornia diversifolia actually turns out to grow pretty well in low light, even quite low light, so don't know why I saw that listed as a 'hi-tech plant'



I think some plants get mislabelled as needing high light at times depending on someone's personal experience with it where it did well under high lighting for them but clearly everything else was in check. I had a similar experience with pogo erectus where it was growing leggy and struggling at substrate level so decided to crank my lighting up a little to see if this helped. All I ended up with was the top portion which was already doing well doing even better which made me suspect co2 wasn't optimum at substrate level as oppose to how much light was getting down there. I then seen George farmer use it in a non co2 low tech scape and it thrived. Makes me think lighting wasn't the issue.


----------



## zozo (19 Oct 2017)

AverageWhiteBloke said:


> they will always just take fish food left over.



That's due to the commercial misleading information out there when it comes to feeding pet fish. Often you read advices from feeding 2 or 3 times a day is obligatory for healthy fish. But that is far from the truth and than they also talk about don't feed this or that fish with this they get obese. Now what's obese, that's 99% a luxery disease and maybe 1% genetic susceptibility.  Fish or other animals in nature rarely have such a abbundancy of food source available, most have to work darn hard to come by. That's why most are very well addapted to live a very long time on rather small meals. Especialy cold blooded creatures, only the warm blooded need to eat an equivalant ratio of body mass or more if they prepare for a hibernation.

Anyway if you feed fish tubifex or other worms high in fat, it kinda means you likely fed them enough for the next 3 days if not more.

I'm a very very cruel person, i oftenly do not feed my fish for days. And rather only several times a week than every day. And i can't remember the last time i had a previous healthy fish getting sick. If they are they were already sick from the LFS. And i realy witnesed a herd of Amano's clear out clado in weeks.. As said i'm very cruel i even made them eat Staghorn.  I know i'm a b@stard..

We have such a saying, hunger makes raw beans sweet..

But ofcourse in certain situations we can grow more algae than can be eaten..


----------



## AverageWhiteBloke (19 Oct 2017)

I generally give a small pinch of flakes and granule when lights are on just to see who's about and what they are up to so I can have a fish count then drop in maybe a bit of alfae wafer and catfish food just before lights out so the more timid night bottom feeders get a chance without getting hassled. Friday I don't feed at all then feed again Saturday night after water change so they get a day and a half without food which seems to keep them interested.

I once heard as a general rule of thumb that a fish's stomach is in proportion to the size of its eyes, not sure how true that is but with the likes of tetras I guess they need very little food to be full. On the other hand I have a pair of Rams which suffered from stringy white faeces which seems to have been solved after worming who are constantly begging in the corner of the tank as soon as they see me approach. I let them grab a granule of Prima just for themselves each every now and again but I guess they have some making up to do.


----------



## Bart Hazes (20 Oct 2017)

Wow that plant, and the whole tank, looks 'fris and vrolijk'. I like the tip of not removing the first submerged leaves that reach the surface and dry out. I like floating plants because they are very effective nutrient removers, but one or a few big emerged sword plants would be nice for a change.


----------



## Bart Hazes (20 Oct 2017)

AverageWhiteBloke said:


> ... Still handy addition in an aquarium for rummaging in the gravel for left over food particles though ...



The shrimp are also useful for those guests, basically all non aqua-geeks, who are less interested in fish (or at least not 20+ tanks worth of fish). Rarely do you find one who doesn't think the amanos and cherries are the neatest thing around. I now also have South American shrimp, Macrobrachium carcinus, who are bigger, more boisterous and have large pincers. I wonder what future guest think of them. They actually look a bit spooky and it is the only tank where I take some care before plunging my hand in.


----------



## Bart Hazes (20 Oct 2017)

zozo said:


> ... We have such a saying, hunger makes raw beans sweet ...



But 'we' also have the saying love goes through the stomach and I like my fish to be in amorous mood. The other thing is that if my fish get food only once every two days during holiday trips I often come back to tanks with plant issues. So I think Diana Walstad was right when she mentioned that she added some (fish)food for the fish and then a bit extra for the plants.


----------



## zozo (20 Oct 2017)

Bart Hazes said:


> Wow that plant, and the whole tank, looks 'fris and vrolijk'. I like the tip of not removing the first submerged leaves that reach the surface and dry out. I like floating plants because they are very effective nutrient removers, but one or a few big emerged sword plants would be nice for a change.


Thank you..  Some Echinodorus can get quite huge, i once saw a pic of a discus tank about 60cm height and had a bunch swords growing out almost tripled that height. No idea which sp it was. But worth to look that up what you can expect.. I also didn't know what to expect, but Kleiner Bär turned out to be a lucky choice, it stops at around 60cm.. Did a few experiments in this tank over the 2,5 years it's old. Here it is about 2 years ago with the same sword still in submersed form. The lily also still is in there, but only submersed now, getting a lily to flower needs reducing flow to a minimum and a bomshell of light. Which is tricky with adding co2 and lots of ferts, it's constantly hanging on the edge of a algae outbreak.. It never flowered again after encreasing the flow again. And now it's back to low tech again, took out all plants requiring co2.


 


Bart Hazes said:


> But 'we' also have the saying love goes through the stomach and I like my fish to be in amorous mood.


True, but that's about what and how you cook, not the amounts and frequencies.


----------



## AverageWhiteBloke (20 Oct 2017)

"We have such a saying, hunger makes raw beans sweet.."

@zozo Someone forgot to tell your cat haha https://www.ukaps.org/forum/index.php?posts/479864

Sent from my STH100-2 using Tapatalk


----------



## zozo (20 Oct 2017)

AverageWhiteBloke said:


> "We have such a saying, hunger makes raw beans sweet.."
> 
> @zozo Someone forgot to tell your cat haha https://www.ukaps.org/forum/index.php?posts/479864
> 
> Sent from my STH100-2 using Tapatalk


 Indeed, he's a big boy, he a;ready was an above average large kitten, that's what intrigued me and wanted to have him. He definitively has some genetic spinn off in his ancestry. He's 7.8 kilo's today, but also 30cm tall at the shoulders. The tank he's in front of is 60x30 for comparison. If you believe it or not, he's on a strickt diet and he stays the same weight. Have another one, the red one, little taller in height, not on diet, eats more, but 2 kilo's less. 

Here he was 2010 about 12 weeks old and already over 2 kilo's..


----------



## AverageWhiteBloke (20 Oct 2017)

zozo said:


> Indeed, he's a big boy, he a;ready was an above average large kitten, that's what intrigued me and wanted to have him. He definitively has some genetic spinn off in his ancestry. He's 7.8 kilo's today, but also 30cm tall at the shoulders. The tank he's in front of is 60x30 for comparison. If you believe it or not, he's on a strickt diet and he stays the same weight. Have another one, the red one, little taller in height, not on diet, eats more, but 2 kilo's less.
> 
> Here he was 2010 about 12 weeks old and already over 2 kilo's..
> View attachment 110779


I feel his pain, maybe it's genetics with me as well, I eat salad and fruit religiously and still seem to pile on weight... oh ok I lie, I eat nothing but rubbish, I class a bag of chips as one of my five a day so no one to blame but myself but the cat and I are happy. 

Sent from my STH100-2 using Tapatalk


----------

