I was thinning my Nesaea Red forest and decided to share some of my observation as I could not find much info on the web.
I got 3 ~6" emersed grown stems about 5 months ago. They promptly died but left behind 3 1/4" 4-leaved immersed offspring.
I let them float untended around the tank. About a month later they grew to ~4":
Nothing really too exciting but I did like their bright-pink stems and yellow/olive leaves.
The 3 babies got re-located to a quiet corner under an overhanging Nesaea Golden.
Fast-forward 3 months and this is what one of them looks like today:
with a half-decent close up:
The color of the leaves is not red red, it's a pleasant delicate pink/orange-red. The plant is a supper prolific brancher: every branch from the main stem has 2-4 smaller branches. The branches detach from the parent stem too easily. In fact, one just 'fell-off' while I was just arranging the plant. I have a lot of smaller stems floating all over the place.
It's also a pretty hairy plant: about 80% of the main stem is covered with roots. The base of each child stem has it's own set of roots. So when a stem detaches, it's already a rooted mini version of the parent.
What I find strange about the roots is that they are either healthy looking whitish roots or almost black in color. The white and black roots are next to each other and are of the same length.
The color of the stem seems to be age related. The older stems are dark olive/almost black mahogany in color, while the younger stems are bright lip-gloss pink, contrasting nicely with the leaves.
My other observation comes from my totally non-scientific 'experiment: I took 3 similar branches off the same parent and planted one each in a very high-light tank (in pic 2), in a medium-high light tank (pic 1) and one in then medium light tanks (it's all relative).
All 3 tanks have the same water, the same neglect, the same fertilization regiment, 3 slightly different generations of AquaSoil, and similar filtration. The only substantial difference is that the very high ligh tank is at ~82F and the other 2 are at ~78F.
I did not notice any significant difference in growth or branching rates among the tanks. Interestingly enough, I also did not notice much difference in leaf color: they pretty much stayed as in Pic 1, yellow/olive with a touch of pink at the tops (rather striking in itself). The lack of expected (by me) differences got me sort of pissed. When in doubt, dump. So, I started dumping Fe in all 3 tanks at about the same rate, ending up at 10ml every other day per ~ 60g. To my chagrin, the Fe dosing did turn the plants in very-high light tank to what you see in Pic 2. The plants in the other 2 tanks were unaffected. Grr on 2 accounts: a) this plants seems to need *both* very high light and Fe b) in my limited experience, this is the *only* plant that got 'redder' with Fe. All other plants in the 3 tanks could care less if they were Fe starved or overfed.
Not leaving well enough alone (
the worst enemy of Good is Better), I embarked on another, equally 'scientific' project. Using the very high light tank as my lab, I left the majority of Nesaea in their quiet corner (the least amount of flow and rather crowded) and moved one plant right in the open in the path of the outflow. My thinking was that the plant with better access to light, and more importantly, better access to nutrients will get 'better'. Well, at least in that case, did not make any noticeable difference. The only exception being the plants in the corner collecting more BBA on the lower leaves, and the plant in the 'center' collecting more string algae
.
In the end, I'm rather happy that I have 1/3 of a 65g full of Nesaea Red - a nice, not in your face, dense and bushy, easily trimmed and propagated contrast plant that does not grow with the speed of Cabomba.
I personally like it better in the 'non-red' state: we have plenty of red plants readily available. The yellowish/olive/pinkish plants are far and few between in my experience.
Give this guy (or gal) a try, add it to your 'African' collection.
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