Need trimming guidance

[Barristan]

I was pretty successful at getting everything to grow, but have neglected pruning. How would I go about cleaning this up? I forgot what the plant is called but it
has filled my aquarium. There is not much light reaching the bottom of the aquarium.



Thanks

[tropicalmackdaddy]

Grab a chair and some scissors and get to work

[wkndracer]

It looks like the main plant is water sprite, if it is the upper branches should be just filled with daughter plants.

If you remove most of the plants branches the rooted base should start the whole filling process again.

or

select a group of starter daughter plants, replant and go.

[Michiba54]

That plant is called Hygrophila difformis a.k.a. Water Wisteria... pretty impressive what you have done there to, lol.

The stems are thick, at least mine are, so I'd grab a pair of scissors and work your way down. If you by chance have a pet turtle they seem to like it. My musk turtles ate the whole thing, stem an all.

[Kathyy]

Looks more like wisteria to me. I see a stem with leaves coming out at the very bottom of the right side.

Which is it? Wisteria is a stem plant and you can trim between the nodes where leaves come out and replant the tops or pull up the whole thing and replant the tops. The tops are the pretty part and the plant is so fast growing the bottoms generally look pretty bad so usually pull the plants out and cut off the bottoms and replant the top.

If it is water sprite it is a fern. There are 2 species in the hobby, both grow from a central point and bud baby plants on the leaves like mother fern. If you see small rosettes of leaves and maybe even roots attached to the leaves then you have water sprite. The broad leaved species was my first ever aquatic plant success and I pulled the old plants out and saved some babies to replant as again this is a fast growing plant that dies fast.

[Jonnywhoop]

[censored][censored][censored][censored][censored][censored][censored]. hahahahh i would just start cutting, tops or not, a trim would do this tank a ton of justice.

[chew]

Just start cutting and RAOK away with the trimmings. I like the way it looks though is that a 40b? Kinda impressive that the whole tank got filled lol

[menoseloso]

it is a weed for me also. trim very low it will be back soon

[Vincent Tran]

I wish my wisteria would grow like that..

[HD Blazingwolf]

it is indeed water wisteria. cut about halfway donw the main stems to remove a lot of plant mass. don' cut too much back as with that much plant, it is doing a lot of filtration needs of this tank

plus the lower leaves will recieve much more light than normal. i imagine it has been shedding lower light leaves for a while so once u cut about halfway down on the main stems. things are gonna look really barren for a few days. but as others have said. its a weed and will be back soon

[HD Blazingwolf]

Originally Posted by Vincent Tran

I wish my wisteria would grow like that..

really? i could grow that much in two weeks time