Cabomba Growing Very Long and Thin

[ddiomede]

Hello all,

Bought some red cabomba and it had some very nice compact growth. Now that its been in my tank for a couple weeks, it has started to grow very quickly, but the growth is not compact and lush, it's rather long and each set of leaves are spaced about 1.5 inches from the one above it.

Tank specs:

46 gallon, eco complete, 2 bulb T5HO aquatic life fixture runs for 9.5 hours per day, I dose with aquariumfertilizer.com's ferts, injecting co2 and the drop checker shows a very very light green. Water temp is around 78-80.

I'm at quite a loss at this point. Do i have the lights on too long, not long enough? Back in the day my lights would come on at noon and go off at midnight and the green cabomba I was growing was perfect. I just wanted to get a consensus as to what the proper course of action should be.

Any help or suggestions is much appreciated. This is one of my favorite plants and I would love to get it growing lush again.

[drewsuf82]

Do you have any pictures?

When and how are you trimming?

When I started with this plant it looked like:



Then it looks like this before trimming:



One Month Later with trimming and replanting the trims it looks like:



I've been trimming the longer ones and just replanting, It's a process with this plant I'm finding, where I've been trimming some side shoots are coming out so it's thickening up and you see what it looks like, soon I will be trimming and replanting again....

As for tank specs you and I are close, only I'm a 55 gallon and I run my 2x54w t5HO on a 4h on, 4h off, 4h on, 8h off light schedule

[ddiomede]

Originally Posted by drewsuf82

Do you have any pictures?

When and how are you trimming?

When I started with this plant it looked like:



Then it looks like this before trimming:



One Month Later with trimming and replanting the trims it looks like:



I've been trimming the longer ones and just replanting, It's a process with this plant I'm finding, where I've been trimming some side shoots are coming out so it's thickening up and you see what it looks like, soon I will be trimming and replanting again....

As for tank specs you and I are close, only I'm a 55 gallon and I run my 2x54w t5HO on a 4h on, 4h off, 4h on, 8h off light schedule

It looks almost exactly like your first photo. I've trimmed it once about midway down the stalk between nodes and replanted the tops but those just shot up to the top of the tank in four days! Same type of spindly growth. I may have to try keeping the lights on longer and see how that goes. If it gets worse I may possibly have to go down on the lighting. Do you think that would be a good starting point for the old trial and error?

[drewsuf82]

Wow they are growing fast, the second picture is about one week's growth.

Anyway from what I've been noticing is that as the plant gets closer to the top the fuller in it grows. I've been trying to trim it closer to the top of the tank and planting it deep enough that it levels it every week eventually though I am just going to let them go and see how that works with this plant I've just been trying to play the fill in game to get the corner propagated with it (which I'm just about at now)

As for my lighting schedule I went to that in my fight with BBA and I just didn't set it back, I've still seen some decent growth but they seem to be off shooting a bit more

[acitydweller]

Red cabomba likely would do better with higher light than its green cousin which explains the denser growth at higher regions of the tank. It looks like its straining to reach the light. another sign is the lower leaves either withering or dropping off making the plant look very stemmy. what is yoru dosing regiment? how much FE is added?

[ddiomede]

Originally Posted by acitydweller

Red cabomba likely would do better with higher light than its green cousin which explains the denser growth at higher regions of the tank. It looks like its straining to reach the light. another sign is the lower leaves either withering or dropping off making the plant look very stemmy. what is yoru dosing regiment? how much FE is added?

I'm using the ferts from aquariumfertilizer.com and and dosing about 2X the amount that it says to. I do about a 70% water change every week as well. I just increased the lighting to 12 hours. If that doesn't work I may have to look into getting another light although I was told that I had med-high lighting with the fixture I have now.