Water Sprite roots issues? Filaments?

motifone · 01-06-2005, 04:19 AM

As any of you know that have kept Water Sprite, this stuff likes to shoot out lots of dangling roots. I keep Sprite rooted in the substrate (not floating), but it still sends out lots and lots of dangling roots.

My questions are:

1) How do you folks maintain your Sprite roots? There's tons of these roots and there are kind of distracting to the appearance. Do you trim as many as you can?

2) These roots also have lots of little quarter inch filaments on them. Is this some type of filament algae growing on them?

3) How do you groom this plant in general? It's nice and decorative. Do you just trim down the bush to control height and shape?

thanks
steve

**observant_imp** · 01-06-2005, 04:35 AM

Those dangling roots are baby plants. You can prune fronds off the mother plant, but each new frond gets bigger. When the main plant is too big, detach one or more of the baby plants and plant it in it's place.

motifone · 01-06-2005, 08:19 PM

do any of you folks go through the trouble of clipping off the not so pretty roots that dangle down? if so, at tips. lotta roots, lotta work

more important, are all these aerial roots normal on a healthy plant (by aerial roots I mean all the roots pushing downward from parts of the plant high up, not the ground roots).

01-06-2005, 04:19 AM	#1
motifone Planted Tank Enthusiast (View User Tanks) PTrader: (4/100%) Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Los Angeles, CA Posts: 648	Water Sprite roots issues? Filaments? As any of you know that have kept Water Sprite, this stuff likes to shoot out lots of dangling roots. I keep Sprite rooted in the substrate (not floating), but it still sends out lots and lots of dangling roots. My questions are: 1) How do you folks maintain your Sprite roots? There's tons of these roots and there are kind of distracting to the appearance. Do you trim as many as you can? 2) These roots also have lots of little quarter inch filaments on them. Is this some type of filament algae growing on them? 3) How do you groom this plant in general? It's nice and decorative. Do you just trim down the bush to control height and shape? thanks steve

01-06-2005, 04:35 AM	#2
observant_imp changing to CherylH (View User Tanks) PTrader: (11/100%) Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: San Joaquin Valley, California Posts: 635	Those dangling roots are baby plants. You can prune fronds off the mother plant, but each new frond gets bigger. When the main plant is too big, detach one or more of the baby plants and plant it in it's place. __________________ Cheryl My tanks

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01-06-2005, 08:19 PM	#3
motifone Planted Tank Enthusiast (View User Tanks) PTrader: (4/100%) Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Los Angeles, CA Posts: 648	do any of you folks go through the trouble of clipping off the not so pretty roots that dangle down? if so, at tips. lotta roots, lotta work more important, are all these aerial roots normal on a healthy plant (by aerial roots I mean all the roots pushing downward from parts of the plant high up, not the ground roots).