water sprite question

[reign]

Can I take a big water sprite and trim it down and let the stems float to grow new roots?

 

[Old Scales]

Yep. But you can replant the tops right away and they'll still set roots. OS.

 

[reign]

How long approx do you think? I bought a big water sprite to soak up excess nutrients and cut most of the long stems off and planted the rest.. (huge plant for 5 bucks) anyway, it's been about 5 days now and where I cut is turning brown, but no roots.

 

[Old Scales]

Well, now you got me thinking. lol When I rooted some it was in a high light tank with CO2 so they were in hyper-drive. You may have to float them to get roots. I may have told you wrong. Try both ways. OS.

 

[reign]

well I did a big water change cuz my nitrAtes were sky high in both tanks.. Im gunna cut down the Potassium Nitrate I dose lol. I think once a week should be plenty, instead of once a day. (oops)

I see roots on one of the stems, but that could have been there from the beginning. The parts where I cut the stem off on the planted end are also turning brown on me. Ill give them another snip and see if it helps.

 

[Plantaholic]

Sprite is a pretty die hard plant so lots of room for trial and error! What type of substrate do you have? I have a high light tank with C02 with sand, and when I try snipping and replanting I think the sand suffocates the stem(turns black and breaks off above the black part)and it ends up floating after a few days... I also have a med light tank which I dose C02 Booster with Eco-Complete and those stems slowly form roots and take hold! Now in my high light tank if I trim a piece that I want to replant, I rubber band it to a small polished rock an place it where I will be planting. After a few days the roots start forming and I remove the rock and bury the roots 1/2 above, 1/2 below the substrate and it stays in place. I have also found that the pieces I have let float to form new roots, tend to grow out more like a bush( cause they grow to gather as much light as possible and floating they're pretty close to my light) rather than growing tall like I want them to...
Also, be sure and trim off any "branches" that turn yellow and the leaves start to flatten out. I've read this means the plant has consumed its max amount of nitrates, and if left alone will break down and release the nitrates back to the water column. I use PPS Pro dosing and when I started I did what you said and was dosing nitrates daily and was at 40-60 ppm! All my sprite was turning yellow. Now I dose potassium Nitrate once after a WC, then test for nitrates and dose accordingly to keep the level in line of 10-20ppm, and that keeps the leaves, that beautiful light green! Hope this helps, good luck!

 

[reign]

Yeah I usually have about 5 ppm and a lot of my ludwigia has pin holes in it, but I really don't think it'll grow very good, all new growth shows terrible nitrogen deficiencies (micro leaves) I do use excel daily 1 ml before my lights go on. The roots I've planted looked good I just snipped all the stems off.. that couldve been an issue but you'd think it would eventually grow.. I only have my lights on 6 hours a day as I have hair algae I'm trying to figure out..

 

[Plantaholic]

Reign, what size are your tanks? I have read that you can dose up to 2 ml of excel per gallon(gradually increasing the amount over time!!!) and it won't harm your fish. That may help with any deficiencies your having...

 

[reign]

Just a 10 gallon. I'm going to be redoing it into a fitted tank so, well see what happens

 

[reign]

I think my algae problem might be from poking to much at the substrate leaching root tabs into the water.. maybe

 

[Mebbid]

The water sprite should do just fine whether you let it float or not. I commonly cut mine and plant the stems and it will eventually grow roots. For best results though cut the root balls that form in the air and plant them at that point.

 

[reign]

Plantaholic: I also have shrimp in the tank, as hardy as they are, they don't like high amounts of it. When I dose after water at the 5ml mark they go nuts and swim all over the place.

 

[reign]

The root balls?

 

[Plantaholic]

With the excel, you would definitely need to work your way up to that. Allowing any inhabitants to acclimate to the change in carbon levels. Maybe 1 ml per day for 2 weeks or so, then 2 ml the next couple of weeks, etc.. It should always be dosed an hour or so before the lights come on, so when the photoperiod starts the carbon is well mixed into the water column and ready to be easily absorbed by the plants. What I recall from random reading is that invertebrates are fairly sensitive to water quality(never kept them so...) and any changes to it, and In a 10G it's not hard to swing the levels as there isn't as much water to dilute anything you add to it. Some ways to help with this would be mixing the excel into a cup of tank water first then adding to the tank, and also running a bubbler for a few hours when adding the excel in, so that the oxygen levels won't drop. If you do decide to increase the dosage of Excel, you'll want to make sure to have adequate lighting as well so the excess carbon is actually consumed by the plants rather than growing more algae... This may be your current cause of the algae you have now. The root balls I think Mebbid is talking about is when the Sprite is shooting up a new stem, it grows as a green "ball" at the end of what new stem has already grown, one of my floaters happend to have one for reference!!

 

[reign]

Yeah I have that on one of the roots.. there's 4 stems coming out and that ball. (Lol)

 

[Plantaholic]

New Growth!!!!!

 

[reign]

That was there when I got it

 

[Plantaholic]

Arghh. Keep an eye on it though, it will be a good indicator of how the plant is adapting to your water.

 

[hartgirl]

So, quick question...just thought if add to this thread instead if starting a new one about this plant: what if it had a really good root structure, but the roots seem to have either shortened or gone away? When I first planted it it had crazy long roots and I moved it yesterday and they're almost gone! Are they just adjusting to a new tank?

 

[Mebbid]

Yeah, the roots aren't terribly important to water sprite. It's really just a structure to hold the plant in one spot.