Emersed Cryptocoryne's and Anubias

[Layout420]

Hello everyone this is my first post here on Plantedtank I'm a long time member of APC and a long time crypt enthusiast, figured I'd share some pics of my plants. Enjoy

A few months ago I had a few fruits and managed to about 10 seeds per fruit. Here are a few pics of the fruits and then the what the plants look like today.

C. becketti fruit


C. wendtii fruit




C. wendtii


C. becketti (I only got one flower from all of my becketti's I think it was pollinated by a C. spirialis)


C. tropica


C. albida in the middle and then some C. pontederiifolia and some HC


C. wendtii 'Tropica aka bronze'


C. lucens


C. albida






C. wendtii 'green'


Anubias 'Gasser' with some random crypts, big crypt in the back is C. ciliata


C. becketti with HC


C. pontenderiifolia


Anubias 'Gasser'

[wetworks]

Awesome pics. You have a nice collection of emersed crypts, thanks for sharing them.

[mallardman12]

I love your anubia! Where did you find that jewel?

[DogFish]

Welcome ! Glad you came over we have a good group of Crypt-Keepers here, some you'll know from APC. Stop by this thread & meet all the usual suspects: http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/pl...rypt-club.html

The Becketti you sent me is doing well, I've transitioned it to submersed form and it;s in my 40g. looks great! thanks

[klaus07]

welcome aboard, I think over half of my crypts and anubias came from you.

[Jeromeit]

You're 954baby on APC right? Welcome to the forum! Love your plant quality!

[speedie408]

Welcome to TPT, much much better than that other forum .

Awesome crypts and man, they're so healthy! Are you using straight ADA AS? Do you normally keep them enclosed in domes? How were you able to pollinate the flowers to create seeds? Sorry for all the questions lol. You've peaked my interest with those pictures .

[Layout420]

You're 954baby on APC right?

Yep, I'm a long time APC member under the name 954baby. Thanks for the welcome and such kind words

Are you using straight ADA AS?

I have a mix of soils I use depending on the species but mostly I am using Aquasoil. I started out with Amazonia II and put a bottom layer of laterite. That combo seemed to work really well. Also I had left over Eco Complete so I had some pots with Eco Complete. Lately I've been trying to convert all of my pots to the new Amazonia. So far so good, It seems to be growing my plants really well. As with any change in substrate I've had some melting and an occasional death. I am starting to add other things to the soil like soaked leaves and leaf litter. I can find it locally in oak forests. That stuff seems to really add to the growth. I've been also converting pots to the coconut husk type liner, those seem to hold up better and you can really hose them down as opposed to the peat type liner that I started out with. Those grow fungus and molds really easily and they break down really fast. I sometimes add some of the left over liners I have into the bottom of pots to help with growth.

As far as fertilizing I use a hydroponic fertilizer made by the company Fox Farm. It's a general hydroponic fertilizer that seems to do the trick. I was fortunate to get my hands on some of that TPN+ that there was a group by on, so I've been using that stuff too. So far so good with the TPN+. Generally I add a cap full of fertilizer when I change the water either weekly or bi weekly. Then I put a cap full in my water bottle and mist every other day or so. I have so many plants so I just try to keep them sprayed as much as I can. Some of the pots have 50+ plants so I try to dose accordingly.

Do you normally keep them enclosed in domes?

Yep, I buy those standard humidity domes that you can get from any hydroponic supply store. I think I pay 1.50 for the tray and then like 5-6$ for the dome. So far I am up to like 12+ domes and then a 29 gallon glass tank, 2 10 gallon glass tanks, a 5 gallon glass tank, a 25 gallon styrofoam cooler, a 10 gallon styrofoam cooler and I think that's it. I try to keep them at higher humidity but I don't have a gauge so I really don't know the exact levels. The domes have 2 vents on the top and I generally leave 1 closed and the other semi open. I do know that my average humidity for where I live is on average over 70-80%. South Florida is a really humid place.

How were you able to pollinate the flowers to create seeds?

Pollinating the seeds was really the luck of the draw. I had a big season in terms of flowering, I'll take a guess and say I had 100+ flowers. So, I would just try to leave the vents to the domes wide open and then I would also try to take any pots that had flowers and put them inside a humidity dome with as many other flowering pots as I could fit. It was like my flower dome. I remember having an abundance of bugs inside my domes. Right now I am getting flowers and I don't really see many bugs if any in the domes. At the height of the season I will probably have swarms of bugs. I had cut open a few of the flowers and a few times there were bugs trapped inside. How the flowers work is they open up and then within an amount of time (I am not sure) they become mature and then the pollen is ready to pollinate, they close up inside and this traps any of the bugs that are inside the flower and this leaves them stuck inside where the pollen is. They become coated with pollen and then when the flower releases them they fly to other flowers and so on. This is how the pollination process of crypts works. I was just lucky. 4 times. It's the best feeling.

[Layout420]

It's been a long time but here are some updates. The flowering season is starting and I've got a bunch of newly opened spaeth's to show. I finally got a spaeth on a plant that I've had for over 2 years and could never identify.

Anubias 'Gasser' flower


I had always questioned the identity of this plant. It was unlike any of the other species I had. I got it with a bunch of rhizomes of C. parva. It was tiny for so long. Eventually it became pretty massive. It's been at least 2 flower seasons without any but finally it bloomed. Luckily I checked that setup because ironically I never check it. I went in there to package up some C. ciliata and was pleasantly surprised. My guess is a C. wendtii species.





Here are pics of the leaves



Here is a pic of it back on 11/21/10, it's in the back


C. beckettii, this flower is sometimes yellow, sometimes yellowish green. I had noticed it 2 days ago. Funny how much happens in 1 day. First pic is yesterday and then the flower is today.




C. undulata, this species comes from Florida Aquatic. I have another species of C. undulata too.


At it's best C. undulata looks like this

Here is that other species of C. undulata. I rarely get flowers from this species. The intensity of the coloring is un comparable to the other species of C. undulata.


Here is a species of what I believe to be C. wendtii, It's been 2 years and no flower yet. During flowering season it gets very colorful so I'm waiting for that to happen.



Here are some pics of the crypts I grew from the seeds I got.

C. beckettii seeds



C. pondederiifoila, I didnt get any flowers last season so I'm hoping for a good season they are looking pretty good right now.


I haven't done this before but I got 2 monster pots and I'm curious to see how much they can grow in the next year having so much space to really take off compared to the mini 3" pots I use

C. willisi x lucens

C. wendtii 'green gecko'




This pot is really interesting, I started it out as 2 Anubias 'Gasser' I had gotten them from a fellow APC member a few years back. They did pretty good in my tank but then they got too big so I converted them to emersed. They did pretty good but when I split them in half they kinda never grew much in the next year. I had a few daughter plants over the next few months but the parent rhizomes never did much. I've had them in that pot for over 2-3 years now and they have never grown in length but they keep sending out daughter plants. I've easily clipped 40 off of the 2 parent rhizomes. I threw a bunch of anubias nana petite in there as well. Also I threw in a c. beckettii about a year or so back. That has really livened up the pot. It is home to a family of 5+ baby frogs. I think of them as the pets I have that I don't feed.



Sometimes I get unwanted pests, Here is the damage a caterpillar can do. If you let them go for a few days they can easily damage an entire pot. This guy was maybe in there for a day or 2.

[mallardman12]

Those crypts look so healthy. do you keep any submersed?

[Layout420]

Those crypts look so healthy. do you keep any submersed?

Nope, not at this time. I do have plans to build a 50-70 gallon tank at my dads business. He has the tank but we have to do a few things to get it ready. He's got a client that distributes gas so he's getting a CO2 tank and regulator this week. I have a nice 4 foot long CF light fixture and we are most likely going to put a flourite/eco complete type of substrate in. Going to order a power head and a Eheim 2215 canister filter. I have a ton of crypts and java ferns and anubias to populate the tank with, and a ton of drift wood. Should have it up in about a month or so once everything arrives It might take a week or 2 to get it ready to add water. I'll post some pics. I will probably put 1-200 crypts in it. The tank is 4 feet wide by 2 feet tall by 1 foot deep.

[Layout420]

C. wendtii 'green gecko'





An unknown C. wendtii, I posted pics of the plant and the leaves in my last post





C. undulata 'Florida Aquatic species'



Some species of C. willisi x lucens



C. moehlmannii, I thought this was long gone in my collection. It looks almost identical to C. pontederiifolia but now that it flowered I can see the subtle differences between the 2 species. C. moehlmannii grows taller and has a more yellowish green shade to it.



I got another spaeth on that unknown C. wendtii species


C. wendtii 'tropica aka bronze'



Random C. wendtii, probably red





C. pontederiifolia is finally going to flower this year, been 2 years since any of mine have flowered. Last season I had about 200 plants that did not flower


Pot of C. albida with HC


Hydrocootle is flowering in my swamp/wetland tub



A family of frogs is living in one of my tanks, I found some eggs today



Here is the tank



3 C. beckettii spaeth's ready to bloom, I hope they all go at the same time it would be a cool pic

[GMYukonon24s]

Nice collection.

[speedie408]

Thanks for answering my questions above.

One more question. I know Florida is always warm so are you keeping these domes outdoors under direct sunlight? I just couldn't help but notice in the pics that they seem to be...

Great update btw.

[Layout420]

I know Florida is always warm so are you keeping these domes outdoors under direct sunlight?

Yep, I keep them all outside. I have a screened in patio that helps keep the intensity of the sun down. Also, I keep them in an area that gets direct sun from 12-1PM ish until 4 or so. All the rest of the time they get indirect sun. I am also going to have to change the location of the plants soon because I'll bee having temps in the mid 90's and although they can tolerate the higher temps the water can reach 100+ degrees and that is no good. I've had the water temp in the mid 80's these past few months with my styrofoam containers in the low 80's to high 70's. Last year I got temps in the high 90's when it was very hot out. No deaths but they should probably have temps in the mid 70's-80's. I have plans to drop the tiny humidity domes I am currently in and purchase a 2x4 foot plastic bin with a humidity dome top from the hydroponic store. I want to be able to control the water a little better right now i'm having problems with algae and fungus/mold. My idea is to have the water level just at the base of the plants and have it pumped in from a sump and hopefully the current will keep the algae down this way I can filter the water. If my idea translates as good as I hope it will be quite impressive. I'll post pics of the entire operation if I get it up and running. Should cost upwards of 400$ to get it up and running but it will really cut down the work I have to do 10 fold. Right now I have 15+ set ups that require water changing bi weekly. Each water change at it's fastest takes 5 min.