Aquatic Plants Digest V2 #852
by krandall-at-world.std.com
Date: Sun, 27 Jul 1997
There is more to this Riccia business than meets the eye. I have seen
Riccia stock directly from Amano, and in person, compared side-by-side with
our typical aquarium stock, it looks quite different. It is a darker
green, and the individual segments are rounder instead of flattened, and
somehow "sturdier" looking. Most importantly, if you plop a wad of it in a
tank, it sinks to the bottom. In a well lit tank, if not tied down, it
will tend to float back toward the surface while photosynthesizing (the
O2
bubbles buoy it up) but it appears to have close to neutral buoyancy on its
own.
Like most of the other people on the list who have commented, I have had
little luck keeping our common Riccia pinned down for extended periods of
time. I suspect that part of the reason is that I don't have the oriental
attention to detail, and tend to let it get away from me!<g> On the other
hand, I _have_ seen it growing in lovely clumps on the bottom of both
natural and ornamental ponds. I have even brought some of these clumps
home, and have them growing in very shallow water on my windowsills. I
can't seem to get the same effect in the deeper water of the tanks, though.
One other tip. When Claus Christensen was visiting, he saw me trying to
manually rid some of my Riccia of bits of Utricularia. He told me that
Amano uses this more structured, but similarly colored plant to act as
anchoring material for his Riccia. When I went back and looked through
close ups of some of Amano's tanks, I realized that not _all_ those bubbles
in the Riccia were
O2... if you look closely, you will see that some of
them are Utricularia bladders!
Karen Randall
Aquatic Gardeners Association
