Live plants with long roots, when to prune?

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Mixer

Aquarium Advice Activist
Joined
Feb 7, 2011
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150
Location
Texas
Ok so I have some Anacharis that I got from sweet aquatics, it wasn't very green when it arrived, but looked like it was I. Good condition. Anyway as you can see in the pics it is growing quite well, it has some very long roots coming down from where the new growth is. Should I cut it just below the new roots and plant it in the substrate or should I just let. It go?

How does this stuff grow normally? Will it go into the substrate and the sprout up again?

Sorry for all the questions, this is my first foray into live plants, and I guess I am doing ok, they are growing.
 

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you will get roots like that all the way up to the top. you can trim them off or leave them. i leave them, since trimming all the roots from the various plants I have would literally take days. anacharis is really easy to propagate. You just cut some off and stick it in the substrate. Before long, it is rooted and growing. Then you'll have some that split off and you cut two stems. Before long, you'll have anacharis growing out of the tank and you'll be begging people to take some off your hands.
 
+1 for mfd. Anacharis grows like a weed under most conditions. I usually get a lot of hair algae when anacharis dominates a tank, so I think it like nitrates, but doesn't use much in the way of phosphates.
 
Yup that was my experience with it... A nitrate sponge but doesn't readily uptake P at the same rate.
 
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