Red stem plants are regarded as difficult to grow for the following reasons:
Red stem plants prefer mildly acidic soft water.
Requires high light conditions and accordingly, sufficient CO2 injection.
Requires continuous iron supplementation to maintain the plant’s leaf color.
Red plants usually needs mildly-acidic soft water. In addition to this, growing red stem plants was also a tough job because these plants are demanding in terms of light, CO2 and nutrient conditions. Now, it is no longer very difficult since the water quality issue can be resolved by the use of Aqua Soil with which you can have mildly-acidic aquarium water just by placing it on the substrate.
Among red stem plants, Rotala Macranda is one of the most difficult species. It is because the plant very often melts and wilts except the terminal bud portion if the plant is sold in poor condition; and it is therefore very hard for it to develop submersed leaves adapted to the aquarium environment. Ludwigia Pantanal Var. Cuba have vivid red tint when grown under high light condition and supplemented with Micro Fertilizer or other types of additives containing rich iron, but they lose their beautiful red color significantly with low light or insufficient iron supplementation. If you wish to maintain the red color of stem plants, you need to add iron supplements on a continual basis.
Every time you go to the shop to buy aquatic plants, You always wonder if you should buy the plants in emersed or
submersed form or TC form . Which form of plant is easier to grow?
If we have to choose either one of them, we recommend you to purchase the plant in emersed form or TC form and grow it in the aquarium to develop submersed leaves, since it is easier for the plant to adapt to the aquarium environment and therefore the risk of unsuccessful growth is minimized.
TC Plants
Aquatic plants from tissue culture offer several benefits. They are free from pesticides and unwanted extraneous organisms such as parasites, pathogens, snails, planarians, insect larvae, algae and annoying “weeds” such as duckweed. The pesky removal of rock wool is omitted completely. And with one portion you get quite a large number of small individual plants
Emerged Potted Plants
In rare cases, emerged potted plants might bring with them tiny pests that had moved in during their time in the plant nursery. These may be little slugs or insects like aphids, whiteflies and thrips. This is usually not an issue when the plants are used in an aquarium, since those critters are land-dwellers and cannot survive under water, moreover they would soon be eaten by the ornamental fish in the tank.
Submersed Plants
In general, submersed leaves can easily get damaged during transportation and they may often be unable to adapt to the changing environment. The submersed leaves grown from a plant in emersed form usually grow vigorously because of the plant’s nature to keep up with the sudden change in environment.
Further- more, the chance of having the trouble of a melted bottom stem is lower in the emersed or other form of stem plants.
Conclusion
For anyone to whom a sterile, clean environment is important and who would like to make sure no algae spores, snails or parasites are introduced into the tank during the initial planting period, getting the in TC version is really a good advice. However, these plants usually need a little longer to adapt to their new surroundings.
Especially in TC portions of ground covering plants like Eleocharis, Monte Carlo or Rotala varieties are pretty large, and you get quite a lot of plants for your money.
If you want to purchase stem plants for the background or epiphytes and rosette plants for the background or the middle ground, we definitely advise you to get the potted variant. Potted plants are much more robust, need a shorter time to adapt to their new surroundings and they already have some height. However, some rare stem plants are only available as in TC product. To prevent the shading problem, it can be worth growing those plants close to the water surface in a Plant Pod to grow in.
If you plan on setting up a Terrarium/Phytoshpere or want to use the dry start method in your new tank, emerged potted plants cultivated above the waterline have a clear advantage, this is especially the case for stem plants.
To maintain the aquascape using Vallisneria, you would always need to trim its runners to prevent them from spreading out to unwanted areas. The only way to treat overhanging leaves is to trim them. Thin them out by cutting the base of the leaves or trim them at water surface level.
When trimming overhanging leaves at the water surface level, the plant will look better if the leaves are trimmed diagonally to sharpen the leaf tips. The tape-like aquatic plants should be trimmed anyway before they start overhanging – this will promote the active growth of new leaves. Needless to say, taking care of tape-like aquatic plants in a shallow aquarium is quite a hassle. It can be said that it is particularly difficult to maintain the good appearance of Cyperus helferi
In Nature Aquarium, aquatic plants grow in a tank and play a role in water purification. Beneficial microorganisms such as aerobic bacteria and protozoa in the external filter require oxygen in the water for their activity. It can therefore be said that microorganisms are more active or propagate at a higher rate with a higher concentration of oxygen. The external filter containing a lot of filter media has a powerful filtration capacity but, at the same time, it consumes a large amount of oxygen for microbial activity. Oxygen is always sup•plied to the water through the water surface, and on top of that, a greater amount of oxygen is generated through photosynthesis of the aquatic plants. This means the aquarium in which lush aquatic plants grow and vigorously perform photosynthesis is favorable to the activity and propagation of aerobic bacteria. In such an environment, organic matter causing water contamination can be captured and consumed by protozoa and they are further decomposed and oxidized by aerobic bacteria.
The role of the aquatic plants in water purification is not only to supply oxygen to the water. Aquatic plants grow by obtaining carbohydrates and energy through photosynthesis but are unable to perform adequate synthesis of amino acids and pigments essential for their growth just by this process. For this reason, the aquatic plants need to get their nutrients from the water. Nitrogen content and phosphoric acid cause water contamination but at the same time they are also nutrients to be absorbed by aquatic plants. Once the aquatic plants start growing vigorously, a large amount of nutrients are absorbed by the plants, by which the water in the tank is purified.
Aquatic plants absorb nutrients not only via their roots but also through their leaf surface. Therefore the environment with a large amount of stem plants with submerged leaves has a high water purification capacity via both the supply of oxygen and absorption of nutrients. Nitrogen content and phosphoric acid are often not detected in the aquarium under such a condition. Growing aquatic plants healthily can lead to water purification
An appropriately built substrate and daily supply of liquid nutrients are crucial to make the colors of aquatic plant more attractive. The factor that determines the leaf color of aquatic plants is pigment such as chlorophyll, and these pigments cannot be synthesized without the help of nitrogen and trace elements. For example, chlorophyll synthesis requires carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and magnesium. Among these elements, carbon, hydrogen and oxygen are attained during photosynthesis. For nitrogen and magnesium, however, aquatic plants need to absorb them as nutrients from their surrounding environment.
An important source of these nutrients is the substrate built on Substrate Additives or Aqua Soil. These substrate materials are rich in ammonia and other organic matters that are a good source of nitrogen. Among aquatic plants which absorb nutrients through roots and leaves, stem plants take in the nutrients mainly through their leaves. Nitrogen in the substrate is dissolved in water and provides nutrients to be absorbed by aquatic plants, though it also has a downside to it such as contamination of the aquarium water.
When a certain time has elapsed since the initial set-up of the aquarium and the substrate is covered by aquatic plants, the amount of nitrogen released from the substrate is much less but it is also supplemented by the excrement of the fish in the aquarium, which is another source of nitrogen. Green aquatic plants turn slightly whitish due to lack of nitrogen if no fish are kept in an aquarium with dense aquatic plants actively absorbing nutrients, such as Riccia or stem plants, or if the number of fish is inadequate.
Even in this case, the bright green color of aquatic plants can be recovered if nitrogen is supplied using Liquid Nitrogen dosing, a liquid fertilizer. Meanwhile magnesium can be supplied to the aquarium together with iron and other trace elements with the Micro Fertilizers. An aquarium with aquatic plants, in general, runs short of potassium and trace elements easily, so these elements should be supplied every day with Macro Fertilizer
To have aquatic plants with a vivid red color, iron should be supplied to help the synthesis of red pigments. As an iron supplement, the use of liquid fertilizer rich in iron is ideal. Daily supply of these fertilizers/additives will help aquatic plants have healthier, more charming colors and enhance the healing effects of Nature Aquarium
The leaf colors of aquatic plants vary with the intensity of light. To grow healthy aquatic plants, you need to have an appropriate lighting environment for the aquarium. Something we often overlook is the aging of lamps. It is incorrect to think that lamps installed for the purpose of growing aquatic plants are working well as long as they light up. As the accumulated lighting time increases, fluorescent, T5 and metal halide lamps start having problems like decrease of illuminance level and imbalance of the three primary colors. These changes are hard to notice since they develop slowly. For the metal halide lamp, a decreased illuminance level is not very noticeable due to its originally high light intensity, but it often poses the problem of lost color balance due to deterioration with age.
Full Spectrum LED, a LED developed specifically for the growth of aquatic plants have the feature of a higher blue spectrum that provides better underwater light transmission. Red light is attenuated rapidly in water and this causes a decrease in the intensity of underwater illumination, which results in a dimmer environment within the aquarium. This takes a severe toll particularly on sun plants, and may cause unwanted elongation of stems and deteriorated leaf color. Not only is it important to select a lamp specifically developed for the growth of aquatic plants, periodical replacement of the lamp is also crucial to avoid the effects of deterioration. Ideally, fluorescent lamps should be replaced every 6 months to a year and metal halide lamps once a year. The light can last longer than this is LED which usually last for 50000Hrs average.
Once the lighting problems have been solved, you should check the amount of CO2 supply. Insufficient CO2 supply under high intensity light can cause a number of problems, inducing inactivation of photosynthesis among aquatic plants, and the alkalization of water, which may result in damage to aquatic plants such as the curled apical leaf of Eusteralis stellata. CO2 level of aquarium can be checked with Drop Checker. If the aquarium water is on the alkaline side due to insufficient CO2 supply, the reagent in the Drop Checker turns blue. In this case, adjust the amount of CO2 supply so that the reagent turns green when photosynthesis is actively taking place, that is, 4 to 5 hours after the Light is turned on.
Careful regulation of the CO2 amount is also one of the key points of healthy aquatic plants
One of the attractions of aquatic plants is leaves of many different colors ranging from bright and dark green to red, pink and orange. Some plants have dark colors such as olive green or brown cryptocoryne. The leaf color varies with the type of plants, that is, sun or shade plants, and the environment in which the plant has grown. As a general trend, the species that fall into the category of sun plants have leaves of bright green or vivid red, while those classified as shade plants have dark-colored leaves.
Even among the aquatic plants in the same category, the plants in a bright environment are of lighter colors, while the leaves in a dimmer environment become darker. From these facts, it is believed that leaf color is determined by the speed of photosynthesis and intensity of light. Differences in leaf color are particularly prominent with red stem plants. If a red stem plant grows deep underwater where only low-intensity light can be obtained, its color would be dark green without turning red; but as the stem of this plant grows upward towards the water surface, the submersed leaves near the surface turn red under higher intensity light.
The change of leaf color is caused by one of the characteristics of plants – regulating the speed of photosynthesis by way of the combination and density of various pigments in the leaves. The pigment that is vital for photosynthesis is chlorophyll. Chlorophyll is a green-colored pigment which means that it reflects green light without absorbing it. In fact, among the three primary colors, chlorophyll absorbs only blue and red light. As can be seen from this fact, plants on land use red and blue light to perform photosynthesis.
However, aquatic plants that undergo photosynthesis in the water are different. Aquatic plants are thought to use mainly blue light for photosynthesis as red light is rapidly attenuated in water. This is all the more remarkable in aquatic plants that grow naturally in deep water. At the same time, the plants can achieve a higher efficiency for photosynthesis if they have leaves containing a higher density of chlorophyll. These are the reasons that aquatic shade plants form dark-colored leaves and even aquatic sun plants also have dark green leaves under low-intensity light. If the plant is exposed to strong light, its leaves turn bright green or red as photosynthesis can take place even with a low level of chlorophyll. Red pigment functions as a filter and softens excessively strong light.
The attraction of the aquatic plants in Nature Aquarium is their continuous growth in addition to the soft and gentle shapes and colors of submersed plants. To achieve this, the installation of aquarium lighting and CO2 system as well as the supply of nutrients and additives through the substrate is vital. Aquatic plants obtain the organic matter essential for their growth by means of photosynthesis, which requires light, CO2 and water. While an adequate amount of water is assured in the aquarium, light and CO2 may become insufficient. In nature, sunlight is the energy source of photosynthesis, and for aquariums, the lighting has the same function as the sun. Aquatic sun plants, in particular, require lighting that can provide a sufficient level of brightness
When aquatic plants vigorously photosynthesize under bright light, CO2 in the water is rapidly absorbed by the plants and eventually becomes depleted if no CO2 is supplied to the aquarium. In this circumstance, plants are unable to undergo photosynthesis. This problem can be avoided by installing an appropriate CO2 system.
The photosynthesis of aquatic plants becomes more active with a sufficient level of illumination and adequate CO2 supply. However, a healthy growth of aquatic plants cannot be achieved just with this. Nutrient salts, including nitrogen and phosphorus, are crucial to synthesize essential protein from the organic matter attained during photosynthesis. At the stage where the aquarium has just been set up, these nutrient salts are supplied from the substrate built with substrate layers or Aqua Soil. The use of a substrate system rich in nutrients promotes the rapid and healthy growth of aquatic plants.
