# Growing C. lingua submersed



## HeyPK (Jan 23, 2004)

In my experience, C. lingua grows readily submersed. It does well in a soil-peat mixture. A half inch or less of gravel on the top of the soil substrate does not seem to bother it. CO2 additions are a must. It never seems to have any melt-downs. All and all, it is easier than many others. I don't know why it has the reputation of being difficult submersed.


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## plantbrain (Jan 23, 2004)

How long have the plants been in there?

Regards, 
Tom Barr


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## HeyPK (Jan 23, 2004)

This is an old picture, taken back around 1996 or 97. All those plants came from one plant, but they didn't do it in that tray. I think I recall planting them just a month or two before the picture was taken.


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## MiamiAG (Jan 13, 2004)

I could never get that darn plant to grow for me. To this day I don't know why. I tried it 2 or 3 times and it would melt completely every time. Never tried it emersed though.

Paul, would you say then that this is a high-light crypt? Did you fertilize the water column? With such a rich substrate and so little top gravel, I would imagine the substrate leached a good deal into the water column. You probably had a substantial amount of tannins in the water?


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## plantbrain (Jan 23, 2004)

I had it grow okay submersed but it never thrived.
I had a few runners. 

I had plenty emergent.
I also had plenty of stock to try out and add to the tanks, but I have not tried it with peat/flourite/mulm. I was using water column dosing only at the time with no iron etc in the substrate, just plain old sand. 

Looks like I may want to try again.

Regards, 
Tom Barr


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## HeyPK (Jan 23, 2004)

I am pretty sure that the plants in the picture had a peat soil mix, roughly 50:50. Also I had sprinkled some broken up egg shells in the mix also, something like 1/2 teaspoon of fragments small enough to go through a rice strainer in about 24 cubic inches of soil, to keep it from getting too acidic. I have never seen the species melt underwater, and it seems to be more tolerant of varying conditions than a lot of other crypts. I don't think it is especially high light, but it may not be quite as tolerant of low light as others. As crypts go, it is probably pretty high-light, similar to C. ciliata. 

I don't always have the time to take the best care of my submersed plants, and once, to my surprise, a plant of C. lingua along with a plant of C. chordata survived about 4 months in a pea-soup green water tank with a few guppies and no CO2. The pH was probably around 8 to 9 for four months. when I finally drained out all the green water, there the two plants were. They hadn't grown, but they still looked reasonably healthy. Crypts do seem to have a tolerance for low photosynthetic rates, and that is probably why they survived under those conditions. A high pH, low CO2 tank is sort of like being in very dim light for them. They can take that. 

I have one C. lingua plant now, growing nicely in a tank where some of the other crypts are showing a few problems, perhaps iron deficiency along with something else; time will tell*. The lingua , however, looks great. The lingua is in peat-soil. The plants with problems are in gravel with only a small amount of soil and no peat at the bottom. 

I did fertilize the water column with small additions of nitrate and phosphate for the plants in the picture. I didn't have a test kit then, but I am quite sure that nitrate levels dropped to unmeasurable values between additions, which were not large. The water was slightly tea-colored, but not a lot. 

I am going to do a separate post with a picture on the problems of these plants. First I have to get rid of a big mat of Rotala sp. Nanjenshan that is growing at the surface and cutting out the light.


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## oh-yeah (Feb 7, 2004)

*Linqua submerged*

After many years of limited success with C.linqua I added CO2 and what a difference, runners at last.It also grows much faster. It has to be the CO2. Hats off to Hey PK. and the rest of you folks. Jack


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