what kind of bulb is this

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clint252010

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Mar 8, 2010
Messages
41
Location
North Augusta
I had bought some apono bulbs a while back, one sprouted but it was a weak srpout and it grew slow and ended up breaking off. So I took them out and dried them in the sun and sent them back to the company.

Finally last Tuesday (over a month later), I received a manilla envelope from them containing a good handfull of bulbs. I only sent them four. These bulbs are a lot fresher than those store bought bulbs, still soft on the inside with a skin kinda like a potato. They have been in the tank 3 days and two out of 4 are sprouting vigorusly.

Anyways, they also had three different bulbs mixed in with the apono's they sent me. These three bulbs are huge in size compared to apono bulb and are dark brownish black in color. The way they look it almost looks like a poppy pod. I dont know what they are but I plopped one in the tank and it sprouted before any of the apono's did (about a day and a half).

Here is a picture of the other two:

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The more ovaly one might be crinum thaianum (sorta water onion), but I'm not sure about the other. Do you have a picture of the one that sprouted?
 
prob some kind of Nymphaea bulb. really just toss them in the water and see what happens.
 
really just toss them in the water and see what happens.

Yeah thats pretty much what i did. lemme take a pic so i can show you the sprout that came out. I did a little research and i seen lilly bulbs esp dwarf lillies that resemble these bulbs a lot.
 
ok here are the pics. they are a little blurry i had a hard time getting my camera to focus on the bulb it kept wanting to focus on the background.


28221-albums945-picture6584.jpg



28221-albums945-picture6585.jpg
 
Nymphaea Rubra....aka red lilly. Ok i knew it had to be a type of lilly, like I said they resembled the dwarf lilly bulbs i had seen pics of. Thanks
 
Yeah I think my apono bulbs that sprouted are flowering instead of growing leaves. I dont know about the other one but the first one that sprouted started off with leafy stalks but the tips were bitten off either by the catfish or the pleco, for some reason the pleco likes to suck on the bulbs. Anyways the stalk part itself is still growing and yesterday it split into two stalks, and i noticed a small nub in between the split. Today there is a stalk now where the split is! Its wasnt there yesterday or last night, it grew like 1.3 cm overnight! Tomorrow will be 1 week mark since I put them in.
 
I wish the bulbs I threw in my 29 were as active. XD All I've got is a 1-inch sprout on my crinum thaianum. I've got some other bulb, but for the life of me, I don't know which way is up or down. Shoulda just floated them for a bit like mgamer said.
 
Yeah i just toss em in and let em go all willy nilly until the sprout gets about a quarter inch them i bury them about 3/4 into the gravel so the top of the bulb sticks out. Except for the lilly, that one is a little to big to bury in my gravel (i need more gravel) plus i dont want the bigger fish to mess with it so I just set it comfortably in the center of a fake grass plant I have. Plus a lot of uneaten food and stuff collects in that grass plant so I figured it would be kinda a direct source of nutrients for it, and so far its growing pretty good. Im impressed.

But yeah I dont know I have tried apono bulbs twice in the past bought from the store and they never grew like this or at all really. The second time I tried them I sent them back to the company and complained.

My honest suggestion for apono's would be to buy a small pack from walmart cause they are cheap, then just take em out and immediately send them back and just say they didnt grow. That way you can get some fresh ones.
 
****! that apono stalk has hit 2cm in a single day! i cant wait to see how big it is tomorrow when i wake up. Now I just need to add more light. I got a ccfl tube I jacked from an old laptop screen. The other night I debugged the input to the inverter board and figured out it needed 3.3V and 12V. My only DC power source I have right now is an old xbox 360 power supply unit which has 5V and 12V. So I built a circuit with a switch and three resistors, 2 caps and a voltage regulator. The circuit takes the 12V and sends it to the inverter board, and the rest takes the 5V and converts it to 3.3V, and man that tiny little ccfl tube sure is bright!

Right now its all on breedboard, so i just gotta solder it to one of my protoboards, and retro fit the tube in my aquarium lid and I will be in business!
 
****! that apono stalk has hit 2cm in a single day! i cant wait to see how big it is tomorrow when i wake up. Now I just need to add more light. I got a ccfl tube I jacked from an old laptop screen. The other night I debugged the input to the inverter board and figured out it needed 3.3V and 12V. My only DC power source I have right now is an old xbox 360 power supply unit which has 5V and 12V. So I built a circuit with a switch and three resistors, 2 caps and a voltage regulator. The circuit takes the 12V and sends it to the inverter board, and the rest takes the 5V and converts it to 3.3V, and man that tiny little ccfl tube sure is bright!

Right now its all on breedboard, so i just gotta solder it to one of my protoboards, and retro fit the tube in my aquarium lid and I will be in business!

Haha, now you've got me lost, Bill Nye.
 
Hahaha yeah. **** when I woke up today it was over 3.2cm tall! I took two bulbs out to dry that werent sprouting and put two fresh ones in yesterday and one of those is already sprouting. I think its the hair on em man, cause all the ones that had that brownish hair stuff on them all sprouted from the hairy part. The ones that had little to no hair on them didnt sprout.
 
My onion (crinum thaianum) has really took off too. I've been seeing about a centimeter a day on this thing. I've got one of those little fake caves sitting in front of it that I've been amusing myself with. Each day I see how much closer to growing beyond the top opening of the cave it goes. Just using the tank's stock flourescent and no fish yet, this little guy is crazy.
 
Wow. Tuesday will be the two week mark since i added the bulbs to my tank. Im gonna tell you right now I have the two main aponogetons that sprouted and man have they taken off! One started off just growing leaves, but the other started off flowering. But I heard once they flower they hit a dormant period, and the best way to keep them going is to pinch off the flower stalks.

Well I woke up early one morning and noticed the one that was growing the flower stalk had been uprooted. I was pissed so I quickly reset the bulb and went back to sleep. When I woke up an hour later that thing was uprooted again and this time the flower stalk was broken in half! I was pissed off! The stalk was floating in the tank, I just reset the bulb and went back to sleep once again. When I woke up the bulb was uprooted for a third time and the floating part of the stalk was gone. I guess they ate it!

But like I said I always heard you can keep them going by pinching off the flower stalk, and ever since that happened this bulb has been sprouting leafs like mad! So I guess they did me a favor. Ever since that they really havent messed with the plants. I think the main problem was with the pictus catfish, he swims around like a mad fish whenever I turn the lights off and I think he kept running into the aponos when it was dark.

Anyways I have since added a small ccfl tube that I jacked from a laptop screen, I will have to do a whole write up on that in another thread (yes I got pics). The ccfl tube seems to add mainly bright blues to the tank while the incandescents provide the reds in the spectrum and together they provide a nice day-glo!

But yeah tomorrow I will post pics of my two main aponos that have taken off as well as the lilly bulb. The aponos seems to be growing large and in charge right away, while the lilly bulb seems to stay short and compact. Like it is branching off in all kinds of ways. Its has grown 3-4 leaf like components that are all similar but have different shapes. I dont know its weird. Definitely different than the aponos. i will post pics tomorrow.
 
Just look out for a flowering fish in the future and you have your culprit. :)
 
Haha yeah! Like when you eat a watermelon seed and you get a watermelon in your stomach lol.

Anyways, here are some pics. Today is the 2 week mark since the bulbs were first introduced into the tank. Its only been since saturday that I retrofitted the laptop ccfl into my lid and man have they taken off since!

Ok here is the first apono that sprouted, the one with the pinched off flower stalk.

28221-albums945-picture6652.jpg


28221-albums945-picture6653.jpg


Its even sprouting roots:

28221-albums945-picture6659.jpg



Ok and here is the second smaller one, the way its growing is different from the other one, I wonder if its a different species?

28221-albums945-picture6655.jpg


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Here is the lilly bulb, its starting to sprout leaves! I dont know this thing grows a little slower and more complicated than the apono's. Its kinda weird. The aponos seemed focused on growing tall while the lilly seems to be more focused on branching out.

28221-albums945-picture6657.jpg


28221-albums945-picture6656.jpg


And thats it for now! I will post another thread soon detailing how I built my ccfl light from spare parts laying around the house and like $2.00 worth of components from radio shack (which I also had laying around the house...im in school for electronics engineering so I got all kinds of stuff hacked and modified and built!). Not the best ccfl to use but its bright as **** for its size and is good for someone who is broke as **** and on a budget (like me)!
 
Ok I have yet another "what kind of bulb is this" question. Actually if you look at some of the bigger bulbs in my first pics you'll see that there are the rubra's which are smooth but there is that odd one that is all lumpy and looks like a turd.

Well I germinated it later than the others and now its got sprouts and its growing totally different than the Rubra. Dont know if its a different type of lilly or something different all together. Im gonna post pics as soon as I track down a battery for my camera. Im also gonna post updates on the other plants they have gotten huge!
 
Ok, I managed to get some quick pics in before the batteries went completely dead. Anyways, the bulb in question is the smaller lumpy one in the pic below. The larger smoother bulb was the Nymphaea Rubra.

28221-albums945-picture6550.jpg



Ok now here is a pic of the nymphaea when it was still sprouting for comparison:


28221-albums945-picture6584.jpg



Ok, now here is that other bulb. If you notice its growing out many sprouts as compared to the rubras one sprout/tuber. Also it has elongated teardrop shaped leaves coming out rather than the arrowhead like leaves of the rubra. Here it is:

28221-albums945-picture6742.jpg




What is this bulb? Is it another type of lily or something different all together?
 
Here are the rest of the plants. This coming tuesday will be the one month mark since I dropped the bulbs in.

Here are the two aponogetons:
28221-albums945-picture6739.jpg


and here is the larger:
28221-albums945-picture6741.jpg


And here is a closeup of the lily, which has now grown two roots directly down into the rocks and is beginning to anchor itself:
28221-albums945-picture6738.jpg



Now keep in mind this is all slightly under one month of growth! The tank is cycled and has plenty of nitrogen but I added some extra stuff to boost the phosphorus and potassium (and add trace elements) just a little bit over the past week. Actually I added a miracle-gro plant spike lol! It has like 6-12-6 n-p-k or something like that. I just broke it up into peices and added small amounts at a time over a week carefully watching pH and such. It wont hurt the fish. I'll just add one spike every 4 weeks or so maybe less depending on growth. Dont want to burn the plants or harm the fish.
 
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