# new vallisneria leaves look weird? (PICS)



## m8r8j (Aug 25, 2010)

so about a week or two ago i got some vallisneria from my buddys tank to toss in my planted convict tank.

its nice and solid green with a little bit of hair algae on it...

but once the roots took and it started growing and sprouting new leaves in my tank, the leaves look totally different in my tank than his... their fatter, and have brown on the sides with black almost leopard spots with a nice green middle... they look completely different than the other ones to me, but they do look healthier. but why didnt they have these nice leopard spots in his tank? and why are mine fatter with darker edges and a greener center?

he had a sand substrate with a ton of lighting (compact flourescent) and didnt dose any ferts or co2...

i have 1.24 wpg of t5no lighting, with flourite substrate, and i use flourish root tabs...

heres a few pics let me know what you guys think.

in this pic you can see 2 of my grown leaves and the rest are his. notice the brown speckles and the green centers









this is the same plant as the first pic, but a different angle... you can even see on this one where the tip of the plant is green, that was a new bud when i got the plant, and as it grew in my tank its a different color.


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## m8r8j (Aug 25, 2010)

noone?


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## HeyPK (Jan 23, 2004)

That is normal for new growth in _Vallisneria americana_. The new leaves come out a brown or reddish brown and then get green later. The same thing happens in many of the sword plants. That is normal, healthy growth. Under poor growing conditions, such as low light, the new growth is green.


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## m8r8j (Aug 25, 2010)

awesome thanks for the reassurance guys. i heard vals are heavy root feeders is this true? im thinking their loving my flourish tabs... the old green growth from my friends tank grows at about .25-.5" a day, whereas the brown speckled growth my tank produces is more like 1.5-2" a day!


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## miremonster (Mar 26, 2006)

@Paul: Do You know forms of true V. americana with brown freckles (under good conditions)? 
I know speckled leaves from variants of Vallisneria nana, e.g. "Vallisneria spiralis" 'Tiger' or 'Striped'; according to Maike Wilstermann-Hildebrand it's a larger form of V. nana. 
Also forms of the Australian Vallisneria australis (described in 2008 ), in the trade erroneously as "V. gigantea" or "V. americana", have them.
http://heimbiotop.de/vallisneria.html#nana
http://heimbiotop.de/vallisneria.html#austr


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## HeyPK (Jan 23, 2004)

I was being careless in identifying _V. americana_ as a broad-leaved, long-leaved plant where the new growth is brownish and older leaves green. The Vallisneria I got from the Santa Fe River in Florida
(link) tends to have brown new growth when under good lighting and CO2 availability. On the other hand, I know there is a somewhat smaller and narrower-leaved Val in Lake Mendota, Wisconsin, that never shows brown new growth. 
The varieties of _Vallisneria_, just in the United States., are many and confusing. Whether there are a number of species or just one in this country is unclear to me, but it looks like recent literature is pointing towards several. Thanks for the links, miremonster!

In the San Marcos River, Texas, I pulled out a Val that, in my aquarium, grew to look just like the straight (non-twisted) (glatten?) form of _V. spiralis_. It is a relatively small Val with leaves no wider than 0.5 cm. It was identified (Doyle, 2001) as _V. americana_, but it may have been _V. spiralis_ because there was an aquarium plant nursery on the river during the 1950's that was the likely source of a large number of escaped exotics including _C. becketti_i, _Ceratopteris thalictroides_ and _Hygrophila polysperma_.


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