LA
Rooted watersprite will grow to the top of a 29-gallon tank in good light.
LA
Watersprite grows fastest floating at the surface where it gets more
light. Those smaller "flakes" are duckweed, a strong
competitor. Any floating plant will steal light and nutrients
from your other plants. Their roots provide excellent security for baby
livebearers.
LA
Watersprite plants also make a nice personal floatation device for newts.
LA
Watersprite will grow up out of the water (emersed). In shallow
water where its roots
reach your substrate, it will grow way out of the water. It grows in
its emersed form
best when kept in a high humidity covered tank.
LA
The emersed leaves of watersprite grow like this.
LA
And keep growing like this.
LA
... and keep on keeping on.
LA
The emersed form looks nothing like watersprite.
LA
You can sometimes find the emersed form of watersprite in pots.
LA
Which looks like this underwater.
LA
Under the surface, floating watersprite grows a healthy root system.
LA
And you can see how the fronds start out like other ferns.
LA
You can plant the little floaters in two seconds -- exactly how long this
one was planted.
Plant them with gentle, community fish. Forget cichlid tanks -- except for
floating sprites. Severums, for instance, enjoy shredding watersprite.
LA
Pick out the nice green ones with longer roots for best results.
LA
Watersprites reproduce from new plants that grow in their leaf notches.
LA
You can see the new plants starting in the notches. Do not pick these
babies yet.
LA
You can pick some good starters off this small "mama plant."
LA
Even more babies on this mama.
LA
Watersprite covering half the top of a 55.
LA
Give water sprite lots of light and it grows like a weed.
LA
Here's the emersed form in a two-gallon bowl. Probably not grown in there.
LA
Here, a watersprite found a notch in this wood and grew out of the water on
its own.
LA
If your watersprite grows too well, feed it to your iguana.
Last Words. Watersprite
grows better in some tanks than in others. Some people just cannot
grow watersprite. Others grow it by the bucketsful. We know
because they keep bringing in buckets of the stuff. It will put
up with some salt in the water. Watersprite usually grows great in
livebearer tanks. Guppies hide in the roots. Black mollies
stand out from the light green leaves. LA
We
Lost the Whole Batch. Sometime in 2011 we "lost" all our
what we call normal watersprite. All the new watersprite we order is a
spindly emersed farm. We'll try to cancert some of these plants to the
submerged form.
LA
Starting over again with an emersed form of watersprite -- looking very
ferny.
LA
After being submerged a couple weeks, April, 2011.
LA
Some moved to different tank because it's further along.
LA
Trying to adapt a new batch, June, 2011.
LA
Maybe the lower part of tis crown is starting to change?
LA
Mother plant discovered July 8, 2011
LA
Revisited July 27, 2011.
Eureka. Totally covered with duckweed in an unused former
goldfish tank we found this mother plant. It's about 6-inches in
diameter. In its crown you can see some tiny daughters. We
pulled off several similar daughters and placed them in a few fallow
aquaria. We put this momma plant on the top row in a 20H illuminated
24 hours. We'll check its progress periodically. Right now we're
squishing the young snails in that tank. This takes a while. You
never get them all in a single day. Plus, we enlisted a small clown
loach to help in snail eradication. LA
LA
LA
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© 2005, © 2007, © 2011 LA Productions

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