Interesting thread
🙂 Why is it so old and almost forgotten? Did everybody give up on UG?. Actualy there is'nt much to find about growing it in a good way. Seen pictures from it looking like growing on substrate, saying woow! Nice job, but those poeple never seem to realy care to share their secrets. Now why is that?
I'm kinda strugling with this baby for a few months now
🙂 and i tend to think the secret isn't in the substrate.. It just isn't devepolped as a plant with a root system using substrate to hold itself in place. It just doesn't use it roots for that.
Now i'm not sure if i'm comfortable with the statement UG isn't realy aquatic.. I think it is aqautic but just not suitable to grow submersed in a organic substrate like clay granules etc. As i see how it grows and yes it does grow and i likes to grow, but just doesn't care about substrate as anchor. I grows and propagates in a creeping fashion. You can compare it the way Hair grass propagates. UG does it the same way like shooting out a root and develops a new leaf on that and the string goes on..
I left some UG which came lose just floating around to find it's own way, my thought was as long as it lives leave it in there. Did the same with Ricia. Now i noticed the Ricia and the UG ending up at a piece of wood sticking out of the water and settling there. The photo below shows this early begining. Ricia finaly grabed the wood, UG got tangled in the ricia and there the cycle completes for it's natural aqautic growth form. Now the true aquatic form of UG comes to the show.
Right in front of the shrimp under the Ricia you see a string of UG hanging. This it grow in a few weeks time from a single leaf floating and ending up in the Ricia. It clearly grows and like to spread aqautic. It's not only growing up it's growing down as well. I think it truly is as aquatic as it is terrestrial, but it's just not a sincker, it's more like a floater cruising around till it finds a place where it finds hold and can propagate. Like other islands of floating vegitation, large peatmoss islands in bogs for example. I've seen all kinds of other carnivorous spieces as well living on floating peatmoss clumps, doing about the same thing, floating around with and on it's host.
Now this patch of Ricia has grown 6 times larger by now, grows much faster than UG and the UG is still in there but not yet realy popping the surface but still propagating. They both have somewhat the same color, it's hard to keep UG and Ricia apart when growing together and UG is still young.
Down on the bottom of the tank UG also still is there, it wants to propagate, rather does this above the substrate thann under it, but then Jacques the shrimp comes allong and puls the whole string out or brakes a piece off.
Now i come to think that the secret in growing UG on the bottom of your tank will probably and logicaly have to most succes if you use an other host to hold on to. Like if you try to grow and propagate UG emersed than put some kind of mesh over it, so the leaves shoot up through the mesh and form a carpet and parts of the stringy roots stay as well under the mesh providing the hold. Tie the mesh to a rock to make it stay on the bottom. Substrate wont do..
🙂