How to "Sculpt" your tiger lotus?

[hashbaz]

For a long time I have been curious about how to get tiger lotus to look its best. There have been some recent thread on this, but I did not want to hijack them.

I have found information to get other plants (like macandra) to grow bright red - low nitrates, high light etc. But I have never found this sort of information for tiger lotus. The height and color of mine are always changing. The pic in my avatar is the best they have ever looked - and I want them to look that way again.

In your experience, what conditions will keep tiger lotus bright red and nice and short?

 

[hashbaz]

I wish I had several aquariums and could do a little experimenting. But for now, I will have to compare with others' experiences.

Here are some of my experiences:

Even after "training" it not to send surface runners, it will sometimes be tall and sometimes short - and I don't know why. I recently lowered the temp of my tank from 80F to 76F and now MOST of the leaves (all but the oldest) have shot upwards. Is this a coincidence? I can't cut MOST of them off - can I?

My tiger lotus has always seemed to have nice color. And I have always had high nitrates - 30ppm or so. Do high nitrates help bring out the red? I think having a lot of red in my light helps too.

What are your experiences?

 

[travis simonson]

Typically, most red plants will show their best colors with low (<10 ppm) NO3 and mid to high PO4 (1.5 -2.5 ppm). Additionally, dosing with high levels of iron helps bring out the reds. Most of them also require high to very high light but tiger lotus is an exception. You should be able to trim almost all of the leaves if necessary, although it may set the plant back a bit. Having red in your lights will make anything red look even redder but it won't actually increase the red color of the plant.

 

[ringfinger]

I started about 5 bulbs at once in my 10 gallon tank which has 1.5WPG, and is always at 78 degrees. I trimmed all of them the same by cutting the surface leaves to try and train them to stay low. About half of them just kept sending 90% of their leaves to the surface no matter what I tried. The other half stayed low and sprouted DOZENS of low growing leaves. So I guess my conclusion is that each plant has a different personality... I just removed the misbehaving ones, and kept the good ones. Cant say much about color though.