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Hygrophila Polysperma Heights

5K views 9 replies 4 participants last post by  pufferfreak 
#1 ·
does anyone know how tall Hygrophila Polysperma gets? I know its a easy plant to grow and such, also if its planted in a huge bunch of its same speices of plant does it look decent? Is it real bushy? does it create a thick or thin forest? thanks
 
#2 ·
It will form a nice thick bush. I love the plant and wish it was still available, my LFS has some growing in their tanks under low light and it makes a great groundcover. In good light it will grow to the surface of the tank in no time. There are some Amano aquascapes that look spectacular with thick plantings of it.
 
#3 ·
yes. :)




i like the look of a thick bush of hygrophilia, but it takes a bit of trimming to accomplish a thicker grouping. it will grow more compact in higher light or closer to the surface and more "leggy" in lower light or at the bottom of a deep tank. that is, unless you convice it to grow more densely by trimming a section of stem and replanting the loose piece about 1.5" - 2" from the closest one. if you keep doing that every few weeks, pretty soon you'll have a thick bush of hygro with lots of branched growth and sometimes some stems will lie down across the substrate like a runner and send down roots and send up more stems.
 
#4 ·
doh, urk beat me to the same answer, and did so in fewer words. that's often a sign of superior intelligence. extra words are just a waste of everyone's time. ;) good question though, puffer

Oqsy
 
#5 ·
lol thanks. well i'm going to have 110wattsCF on one half of my tank and the other half dark and wanted the side with all the lights to have a huge mass of one species of plants. since I have all these rasboras I figured they would like some plant cover to mingle around in and stuff. Plus my cherry shrimp would love it also. so you think it will grow to the top of my 55 gallon tank huh.....cool. sounds great to me, now just to find the plant! I wonder if anyone around here has any
 
#6 ·
if you'd asked a few weeks ago i would have had 2 variations... i chose to pull them from my tank because along with ludwigia repens, they were growing so fast that they were depriving my other plants (especially swords) of nutrients...
I'll check my mom's tank and see if she has any hygro. polysperma sunset var. that can be trimmed (she usually does). if so, you're welcome to it. shouldn't take long at all to mail it since you're in state :)

Oqsy
 
#8 ·
Thanks Oqsy! Bharada did you just have one plant of a clump of it? I'm hoping that one big group of it will look nice. Also will it need alot of CO2 with 110watts over it? I was figuring on hooking up 4 DIY Jello 2L bottles to two Hagan Ladders in the 55. Will this work good?
 
#9 ·
I started off with one stem that I kept dividing. At the end I had maybe 6-8 closely planted stems, but it grew in a tangled mess with as much lateral growth as vertical and an enormous amount of side shoots.

I think H polysperma is a relatively undemanding plant as far as lighting and CO2 goes. Four 2L bottles should do you just fine. You may want to run your CO2 line through some form of bubble counter (make one out of a 1L water bottle) just to catch any gunk that the yeast mixture is likely to produce. Otherwise the Hagen ladders get gummed up pretty quick which traps the bubbles instead of letting them climb.
 
#10 ·
Ok I will do that, so 4 2L Jello bottles with a bubble counter, works for me! I wonder if makeing a Inline reactor would be better then buying two ladders, I mean its out of the tank and prob. costs about the same. Think a 6 or 8" inline reactor could difuse that much CO2, well most likely if it would be able to do pressureized. Sorry thinking outloud
 
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