# Crypt pygmaea



## keef

Ok,

My crypt pygmaea melted away about a week ago and hasnt come back yet. I have it in a 7 gallon bowfront with 2 watts per gallon, eco-complete substrate and no co 2. If it doesnt come back , I want to try again. Does anyone have any suggestions?


Keith


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## Chuck H

If all of the leaves are gone, and if the rhizome(s) has not rotted away, you may want to dig it up and float it until new leaves sprout, then replant.


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## Sue

I had good luck with letting two crypts that melted on me float. Just let them float around until they had a couple little leaves.


I like your Greenman Chuck!


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## Phil Edwards

Keef,

That's a tough call. I would tend to leave the plant alone for another week or so to see if it sprouts new leaves. If the rhizome hasn't rotted then it'll sprout again. I've got some growing emersed and it took two weeks for new leaves to sprout after I re-planted it. I think it was kept submersed by the person I bought it from.

Then again, Chuck and Sue's advice is also good.  

Best,
Phil


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## MiamiAG

Keef,

I would wait another week and see if anything happens. If it doesn't, then dig it up and try the floating method. Remember that Crypts change their leaves to fit their environment. This requires energy that is stored in the rhizome. As long as the rhizome looks healthy (not mushy or transparent) it is better to leave it alone.

Good luck and be sure to let us know what happens.


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## HeyPK

I have often seen the best start-up of crypts when the nitrogen and phosphorus is low. I don't know why this should be because I don't know why higher N and P values would be harmful. Some of my best crypt establishment has been when I also had a rapidly growing plant, such as H. polysperma also present, and nitrogen limited. After the crypts are well establsihed, then I remove most of the H. polysperma, and larger additions of N and P seem to do no harm and stimulate growth. The C. aponogetifolia pictured in the album got started this way.


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## gnome

Keith,

I'm having problems with my C. pygmaea, too. I haven't had them completely die off (except for one scrawny piece when I first got them) and they managed to survive the initial melt. But I can't get "happy," or even consistent growth. Pieces that were pretty robust to begin with are going puny. Pieces that started off puny and I was sure would disintegrate in due time have started growing new leaves. Most of the leaves are riddled with holes. One of my biggest pieces keeps "pushing" its way out of the substrate so I can't get the roots to establish. 

This particular species is very new in the hobby so it's going to be difficult to get advice for the time being. Paul - hate to put you on the spot like this, but have you had luck keeping yours alive? Or have you gotten more of the stuff from anybody else? I'd love to figure out what conditions this plant will thrive under. Maybe it likes dimmer lighting...?

OTOH, the Cryptocoryne wendtii x hybrid is putting out new, smaller growth, but is doing extremely well. I'm glad I kept the piece I did. 

-Naomi


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## hubbahubbahehe

namoi, i have the same situation as you, plus my leaves don't look a nice deep green. i use flourite substrate and put roottabs underneath them...still get whitish streaks among the green leaves..did you figure out your problem?


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## gnome

Hubba,

I think they're actually supposed to turn a copper/reddish color. I have some in a tank with Flourite and some in Eco-Complete. Doesn't seem to make much difference. They look crummy in either case...

-Naomi


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## keef

I am not sure if mine will bounce back. There isn't any rhizome left only some white root mass that I am going to try to float. I may need to get another plant to try again. My Tropica Wendtii is doing fine. It didn't even go through much melt. I was considering trying Petchi in the tank as well, but not sure how big it will get.


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## gnome

Keith,

If you're looking to try smaller crypts, there's C. willisii. It remains green, AFAIK, if that matters to you. Never kept it, myself. I've never been too keen on it, from the photos I've seen because of the long petioles, but you never know. Sorry - wouldn't know where to get them, but they're not particularly rare. I guess my LFS just doesn't stock them regularly. 

I'd suggest C. parva except that I had no luck with it a couple of years ago. It was doing much the same thing that my C. pygmaea is doing now, only it took at least eight months for it to finally die. It does require more light than most crypts. 

I'll watch my C. wendtii x hybrid to see how big it gets. If it stays small, I'll recommend it for nano tanks. It's dang hard to kill - left it floating in a sponge-filtered, unfertilized, poorly-lit tank for weeks and it was fine! I'd definitely recommend it as a super-hardy beginner's crypt. I just don't know how big it's supposed to get, is all. 

-Naomi


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## keef

Naomi,

I already have crypt willissi. I didn't care for the look of them at first, but they are starting to grow on me. I don't think the tank has enough light for parva. I wanted the tank to have kind of a grassy look but I might have to settle for a shadowy forest. The petchi might work out for that. 


Keith


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## hubbahubbahehe

yo wassup Naomi, you are in the sf bay area just like me!!! what lfs's do you frequent?
how did you get into planted tanks?



Keef, go for petchii, it's extremely easy to keep and not fussy.


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## Error

My C. pygmaea is doing pretty well so far, so I thought I'd post my tank specs in case anyone was hell-bent on trying to keep this stuff alive:

46 gallon tank
Gravel substrate with soil underlayer
5.5 watts/gallon
DIY CO2 (gelatine)
pH 7.0-7.6
GH 10-13
dKH 5
High bioload
Experimenting with Flourish currently, probably going to switch to macro and micronutrient ferts soon
Human Ca/Mg supplement added once per week

Mine is sort of a brown/green color. It's hard to describe, but it sort of looks like C. walkeri under high light. The leaves are sort of striped, too. Looks neat.

Oh, by the way I'm new to this forum, so, HI  I was wondering if any Crypt trading went on, and where at, etc.


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## Phil Edwards

I've got some doing quite well growing emersed in a sand/forest compost soil. It's under 2x 40w T12 fluorescent bulbs with a water level about 1/2" below the substrate surface. It gets misted with tank water every day and with a fertilizer mix once or twice a week.

Paul,

Once it's grown out enough to divide I'll send you some.

Best,
Phil


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## Robert Hudson

I have been reading this thread for interest because I brought in an allotment of these plants as an experiment to see how well I could keep them and have them grow for an extended period of time, to see if they would hold up and be a viable plant for me to sell.

I have had them for about five weeks now, and the plants are growing. They were quite small to begin with, but have grown about an inch and a half taller. The plants are in a 20 gallon tank with a 65 watt power compact and Schultz clay conditioner as the substrate. The tank also houses some C spiralis, petchii, and some Anubias. Fish population is limited to 5 Corys and three or 4 Otos. It has no C02 injection, only very occasional trace minerals added to the water and Seachem nitrate added about once every three weeks. The water is never changed, only topped off. The filtration is a hang on aquaclear filter. The substrate is about three years old.

The plants are a combination of green leaves and brown leaves, and are keeping the narrow shape as they grow. I took three to five plants and wrapped a cotton or some kind of fiber band around the base of the plants with a lead weight. I set these on top of the substrate without burying any portion of the rhizome. I also left the rhizome and roots exposed below the wrapping and weight. I was afraid I may rot the rhizomes if I buried them at all. So far it is working.

In this picture, the pygmaea are the plants in front by the glass, and the petchii is behind them.


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## Error

Ooooo, pretty.

Mine are still growing well. The blades are green/brown. They are starting to put out runners now, we'll see how fast this stuff is.


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## vinz

I'm getting conflicting info on the height of this plant. Somehow (from what I've read or heard), I've got the impression it's a short plant in the aquarium. But, the CryptPages say they found specimens with leaves as long as 25cm.

What's the general experience for people here? I procured a small specimen recently, so I haven't seen how big it can get yet.


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## Antonio Trías

Hi everyone. I have this plant for a couple of weeks, is growing very well, my water is

pH 6,8
Kh 5
GH 15
CO2 + 20 mg/l
light: under 2x250w HQI about 70 cm deep (1 m from de bulb)
My substrate is a mix of vermiculite, sepiolite, humus and gravel

At the moment the plants measure about 5-8 cm 

On the same day were planted C. griffithi, and C. nuri, having more troubles to grow than C. pigmaea


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## gnome

Vincent, 

I'm afraid I'd misled myself (and possibly others) into thinking that C. pygmaea was going to be a cute little shorty plant, and now I'm actually getting long leaves. I'm not too keen on the form because the petioles are quite long. It sort of reminds me of a laboratory spatula.

Anyway, it took a heck of a long time for it to finally settle into my tanks - sometimes I wonder how any of them survived at all. But once they did, they started putting out very long leaves. My best estimate (by putting the ruler against the tank side) is that the longest ones are about 11 cm from crown to tip. I do hope that the reported 25 cm was in reference to emersed growth. I haven't been to Jan Bastmeijer's (sp?) site recently, but I've always gotten the impression that he grows his crypts strictly emersed. 

I very well may trade them or auction them off in the near future, but it's a shame because it took them so long to adjust to my tanks. 

I think they should come up with a better name for C. pygmaea. It's a little misleading, I think. 

-Naomi


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## vinz

Yeah, the name is misleading.  

Anyway, the 25cm reference was to those growing submersed in deeper parts of their biotope. In the same biotope, short specimens were found in the shallower waters. This could imply that light is a fairly major factor.

Coincidentally, I bought C. wendtii x hybrid together with the C. pygmaea, as well as some C walkeri. All have been planted. The wendtii was the largest of the 3 and still is, but it's only been a few weeks.


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## stocker

vinz said:


> Coincidentally, I bought C. wendtii x hybrid together with the C. pygmaea, as well as some C walkeri. All have been planted. The wendtii was the largest of the 3 and still is, but it's only been a few weeks.


Vinz,
from Teos? I'm also interested to get some


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## HeyPK

Hey, Diz is you moderator talkin! Diz thread is suppoze to be about C. pygmaea! Get what I mean?


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## gnome

Oops! Sorry, Paul #-o. You know how I have a terrible habit of going all over the place with my posts. I'll edit my long-winded one to cut out the bit about C. wendtii x hybrid. I'll start a new thread on that one later. 

My apologies . 

-Naomi


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## cS

In a partially shaded area under 3WPG over a 20G, my C. pygmaea averages 2"-3" long leaves. The crown is buried ~1" below the substrate line and has been growing steadily for the past 3 months. This is a particularly robust and relatively fast growing species IME.

No supplemental substrate additives aside from accumulated mulm and water column fertilization.


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## HeyPK

My pygmaea is very small, and has been growing very slowly. The longest leaf is maybe 1/2 inch, petiole and all. I attribute this slow growth to plastic poisoning from the plastic trays that it and my other plants are in. I hope to get all the plants in that tank replanted in glass trays this weekend. Then I expect to see pygmaea grow a lot faster along with nuri, usteriana and griffithii.


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## tsunami

Sorry for being a little off topic, but what kind of plastic are you growing your C. pygmaea in? I've been growing plants emersed in plastic trays for over a year now, and Cryptocorynes have always grown rapidly with very healthy, glossy emersed leaves.

Carlos


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## HeyPK

I think the subject of plastic poisoning deserves its own topic heading, and I will try to transfer this leter to a new heading. I have been using the black plastic trays that microwave dinners come in, and, when plants are being grown submersed, I am convinced that these trays adversely affect 90% of my species, both crypts and others. Interestingly, C. lingua and C. walkeri, the old lutea, do fairly well in these trays, but other crypts struggle. I even lost C. crispatula, var. balansae, in a tank with plastic trays. 

Two weeks ago, I started up a couple of 15 gallon tanks with a variety of plants, including some crypts, all in glass trays. It is already clear to me that the plants recovered from the bleach treatment and have started growing much better than I have ever seen since I started using plastic trays. Even the snails seem healthier and more active, and they are cleaning up the algae more efficiently. 

I also am convinced that at least 3/4 of the plants I am growing in soda pop bottles are being affected adversely. They do not respond well to the addition of nutrients. It is too bad. I thought that the soda pop bottle method was a great way to keep a lot of species 'up on the shelf' where they require very little time for upkeep. Oh well. I can do the same thing with glass bottles.


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## lowcoaster

I keep my C. pygmaea in a 5 1/2 gallon with medium lighting and it does fine---it grows slowly, but it does grow. I believe it is one of those "leave me alone" plants that requires superhuman patience. 

As far as C. parva, It grows EXTREMELY slowly, thought I haven't been able to kill it.


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