# we are talking slow



## king kong (Jul 2, 2012)

It's a good thing I might live another 10 years. Yes I know I live in the tropics where everything grows fast but some of these crypts are ridiculous. I take a scan of my emersed set up with plants from places I never knew existed before going out of town for 10 days. I know this way when I return I will see a remarkable...well some moderate change.
Not a thing. I think one leaf out of 10 plants twisted 5 degrees. And the flamingo plant still has its juvenile plumage. I am going to take a more conservative approach. This one leaf every 3 months thing takes a bit getting used to and that's hauling butt I am told?


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## saddletramp (Sep 16, 2012)

There is a simple solution, you need more Crypts!
If you have one child and watch him or her all the time, you will say, "I never see him or her grow!"
So, get yourself about 50 or 100 pots of Crypts and you will see lots of things happening!! You will see!
You will be so happy!!
Bill Reichert


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## king kong (Jul 2, 2012)

If cotton grew like crypts the Southern States would have never seceded.
I am trying to reach 20 plants. I am getting tracking information in languages I never heard of before.
I have no idea what I am doing but having a great time being stupid.


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## AaronT (Apr 26, 2004)

What's your setup look like? Are you growing these outside taking advantage of that tropical climate?

One word: Fertilizer.


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## king kong (Jul 2, 2012)

I got a waterfall, air stone, good light 12 hours, 78 degree 6.8 pH RO water, substrate from Nigata plus hundreds of other types. Fertilizer from every producer East of the Mississippi, plus pleasing background for the plants to see and humidity at around 80 %. I am going easy on the food, Yamato green with N, but thinking about ramping it up a bit. Need a good source of Nitrogen that doesn't burn?
The flamingo is submersed and growing well I must say.


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## niko (Jan 28, 2004)

Do you know how easy it is to convert your tank with that few inches of water suffocating the roots into an ebb&flow hydroponic system that provides the roots with lotsa Oxygen? You decide how you want to do it but the idea is simple - drain the water from the tank every day for as long as the plants can handle it. The basic rule is simple - roots love Oxygen. Meaning that wet substrate is better than substrate saturated with water 24/7.

I cannot even start telling you how fast plants grow in a hydroponic setup. At one time I had HC (yes, it is not a crypt as far as I know) that exploded with only 1 hour of flooding the substrate a day. 23 hours humid AquaSoil, 1 hr flood. 2 square inches of HC grew into 2 sq. ft in one month. The growth maybe fast but the quality of that plant was beyond anything anyone will ever see again. No ferts, no CO2. Un-be-li-veable!

I bet you can experiment with crypts and hydroponics. Chances are you may have too much crypts to get rid of. And you maybe the first to do crypts hydroponically.


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## king kong (Jul 2, 2012)

Excellent...I will start operation "lotsa O" instantly by first lifting the clay pots so the water level touches the bottom of the pots. I always wondered where the water line should be for best plant performance. There is plenty of vertical space to move into for plants so I can keep my waterfall going. It's the only thing that moves.


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## AaronT (Apr 26, 2004)

The ebb and flow setup should work really well. I'm sure there is a way to automate it too by having another tank underneath that pumps the water back in and then a timed drain valve that let's it back out.

For nutrients you have to be careful. The blackwater Crypts really don't like a lot of TDS in the water and it really is best to use some leaf litter and / or peat in their pots to lower pH and feed them.

Are you keeping blackwater species in with other species? If so, your pH is too high.

Also, lots of iron dosing helps. I use iron eddha in my setups as it takes a long time to break down in light.

You should also try net pots like these with liners like these. They will let the roots "breathe" like niko is saying and keep the plants from becoming root bound. Also, runners will shoot out the sides and you can simply pluck them off and start new pots.


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## saddletramp (Sep 16, 2012)

Hey guys, this is starting to be a lot of help...... from a lot of directions......All at one time!,
Which one of you is going to take ALL these suggestions and turn it into one simple, successful system?

This thread should be interesting to sit back and just watch for a while. What will it evolve into! Lots of these plants have requirements which fall into specific categories. They do not all thrive or even survive under the same conditions.

Have at it. We can all learn something from the ideas this thread will generate. 

Bill


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## saddletramp (Sep 16, 2012)

You mention 'Flamingo' in your first thread post. There are several here. In another thread a photo is posted showing one of the Flamingos that grew from a 2 1/2 " tall plantlet to a monster one foot across emersed with three plantlets in less than eight weeks!!
The set up is as simple as can be, nothing complicated.
I have another smaller, maybe 4", Flamingos growing slowly right next to the monster. GO FIGURE,
THERE IS A BIG DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GROWING THE COMMONLY CLONED STUFF AVAILABLE IN THE PET TRADE AND THE RARER, SENSITIVE SPECIES.

I look forward to watching and getting ideas from this thread. Bill


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## king kong (Jul 2, 2012)

I agree Bill and this horticulture drill brings me home to my roots. I am in the nursery and landscape trade myself. I also have a passion for bonsai. I thought they were hard to grow. But all kidding aside, plants all seem to want the same things. The middle ground I will target so this will be neutral pH close to 7.0 maybe 6.8, low mineral water, plenty of light and proper nutrition.
The one thing that I really want to get a recipe for substrate so I am going a little crazy with this but hopefully some ingredient or mixture will work best. Maybe they all will...who knows.
So far I have.
Peat pellets
volcanic rock
perlite
ADA amozonia
mineralized soil
peace river gravel
silica sand from fountain of youth spring in N Florida
turface
and the list goes on but I am going to keep the substrate on the large size from now on to allow maximum oxygen penetration.
Back to the crypt bench and keep posting the thoughts, I really appreciate it!


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## niko (Jan 28, 2004)

Here's a "secret" - the way I setup my emersed HC factory back then:
https://plus.google.com/photos/1116...s/5628507133386083457?authkey=CJfNhPzg3MG43gE

The setup is very simple and cheap. Basically a wooden box. Line it up with thick plastic. Fill the plastic with about 1" of water.

In that water you place a rack made of white eggcrate. On top of the rack you put a black plastic tray. The tray has about 1-1/4" of AquaSoil.

The irrigation: There is a small pump sitting in the water below the black tray. It is on a timer. It pumps the water up - to the black tray above. When the pump stop the water drains back through the pump. Now you are left with wet AquaSoil.

The black tray also has an overflow made of a 90 degree PVC coupling. The idea is simple - you do not want the black tray to overflow and water to be running over the edges. You can control the water level by turning the 90 degree elbow to the side. Perfect control.

The lights I had over that HC where only 2" above the plants. 4x32 6500K Home Depot T8 fluorescent tubes. On for about 12 hours a day.

The pump worked for only 1 hour a day. Basically when the pump is running the black tray will stay full of water. When the pump stops all the water drains down. Simple.

I found that my HC converted to a basically fully terrestrial form. No need for humidity control. Also once you setup the system you do nothing for a week. Then you add a little water. That's it. Adding ferts did not make a difference. Adding old aquarium water did not make a difference. Truly a perfect hands off system.

Now that was for HC. The pH of that AquaSoil soaked with water was somewhere around 5. The roots of the HC where about 1-1/2" to 2" long and snow white. You will never see such healthy roots ever. Here are close up pictures of that HC:
https://plus.google.com/photos/111646610078083070168/albums/5183741210491681169?banner=pwa

At this point of this post I know there is someone planning on making money using that setup. Yes it works. Yes you will constantly ship plants. But the planted tank folk are cheap. They will haggle over 50 cents. If you want to play that game be my guest. I had 8 trays and all of them filled with HC every month (I shipped extra HC (more than the promises 2 square inches for $5 - totaling about 6 square feet of HC every month)). It didn't make for a good business anyway. So don't get your hopes up.

The beauty of the system is in its simplicity and hands-off functionality. I learned that all our aquatic plants want one thing - to get out of the damn water into the air. What we do is to push them down into the water, shape them in cheesy ways that we find pretty and pervert Nature in a variety of ways pleasing to us. That's why I now like tanks that look as close to Nature as possible. The Japanese style is a joke. Take a look at real beauty here:


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## nilocg (Sep 14, 2010)

Niko, one question with the above setup. When the pump was on did you let the water level rise above the top of the substrate(and HC) or was it just enough to wet the soil?


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## niko (Jan 28, 2004)

When the pump was on the water covered the HC completely. But don't be mistaken - the plants didn't care. I intentionally made the water level get above the plants to drown fungus. Fungus and BGA are your main enemies in an emersed setup like that. I never had any other issues actually.

After trying a variety of chemicals (antifungicides) I finally realized that I have never seen fungus grow underwater. That's how the idea of "drowning the fungus" came to my mind. I raised the water level to reach above the plants and I never had any issues with fungus ever again. Fungus stops the plant growth for no apparent reason. If you let it spread it will eventually make barely visible luminescent white strands at the base of the plant. But you have to know what you are looking for. Simply put - I figured out that if the HC stops growing there is something hitting the roots. Daily 'drowning' for 1 hour under water took care of all fungus issues. My HC never stopped growing again.

I also had a tray with just AquaSoil and HC. No hydroponics, no pumps, just wet substrate. Guess how well the HC grew? It didn't. Not a single good leaf! Later Tomas Barr came up with his "dry start method" and I was speechless. People will indeed listen to anything and believe it. The idea is to plant the plants in wet substrate and let their roots grow for some time before adding water to the tank. That way the plants are way ahead of the algae when you fill the tank with water. That is funny to say the least. Without Oxygen and hellish strong lights those half-suffocating roots are going to do one thing - nothing. A better way would be to setup a hydroponic ebb&flow system in that tank. Then the roots will take off like crazy. The only thing (besides needing super strong light) is that once you fill the tank with water the plants find themselves in a completely new environment 24/7 and the whole idea of a "dry start" now becomes just a prolonged innuendo to the same thing that will happen if you filled the tank with water on day 1. The whole "dry start" idea is just amazing all around.

BGA: Just hit it with erythromycin. That's all there is to it. Gone in one day. Adjust the dosage to your water volume because remember - now you are not dealing with a full aquarium.

I had my setup in one of the rooms of my house. There were never bug infestations. But I also think that the "flood" periods would actually take care of quite a few other issues. You will have to be a pretty resilient creature to do well both in and out of water. Which probably limits the pests to just a few. Truly - this system worked very well.

I say that the HC didn't care if the water covered it or not because my lights where only 2" above the plants. That space was basically hot because the fluorescent bulbs emit some heat. The HC was perfectly fine - as you see it on those pictures I linked to above. I could have taken the darn thing and planted it in a pot and placed it on the window sill. My point is - your crypts will be fine BUT be careful in the beginning. I gradually acclimated the HC to open air - I used clear plastic lids on top. I moved them to the side a little every day until it made no more sense to have them on top of the trays. I am not sure if I had to acclimate as slow as I did.

Some time later I had a single crypt plopped on a bare bottom of a 10 gallon tank. No water. No glass cover. Just a special LED grow light on top which made the plant look weird purple color. The plant fed from its own resources I guess. It made small new leaves - about 5 in 3-4 months. It never died - I moved it to an aquarium. My point is - that crypt did just fine in a less than humid environment and no substrate. So see what you can do with crypts by using hydroponics and doing everything right for them. I suspect it will be an exciting project.

My original flooding time was about 4 hours. Then I started to decrease it and reached the 1 hour flood / 23 hours humid soil. I actually think that even 15 min a day will be enough. Now, note that all my experience is with AquaSoil. I do not know how other substrates will dry, grow ideal roots, etc.

One other thing that did not make any difference for my HC - aeration of the water. Maybe my AquaSoil was new and not mushy. Meaning Air (Oxygen) easily got between the grains. Aeration of the water is a common thing in hydroponics so I tried it. I also tried pumping CO2 around the HC. That didn't do anything. When I put a lid over the tray and pumped CO2 I found how easy it is to kill the plants with CO2. So my setup ended up being extremely simple and very robust. AquaSoil, 1 hour of flood a day, no ferts, no CO2, no air pumps, strong light. That's what I am offering you to do.


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## king kong (Jul 2, 2012)

Very nice Niko. Tidal plants that live either submersed or emersed or a little bit of each.
Need to think about how to flood and dump because I have a problem. I do not have a free source of low KH RO type water. My well water is very hard so would need to buy a RO unit to keep up with the water changes unless I recycle the same tank water.
I have been looking at hydroponic deep water systems. They are more complicated then I thought but use the reservoir with pump and drain type configurations.
Today I lightened up my substrate mix, elevated the pots, added more fertilizer and boosted the lights so will see if I can grow these bullosa like boston ferns.
Nice HC slide show Niko. Very healthy plants indeed. What are you using for fertilizer and substrate (just aquasoil) if you don't mind please?


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## niko (Jan 28, 2004)

Someone told you you have to add fertilizers so all your dreams come true? Poor plants in Nature are dying left and right because they don't get excess fertilizers I guess.

I told you two times - that HC was grown with zero fertilizers. Brand new AquaSoil only. I guess it had some Ammonia in it. Enough to last 4-5 months I guess. That was it - water, AquaSoil, light. Done.

One way to make your system hydroponic is to buckle up and elevate the pots by hand every day. Until that gets to you it is the simplest hydroponic method in the book - move the pots by hand in and out of the water every day.


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## denske (Jul 28, 2013)

Good info niko, you didn't have to have any type of lid on your wooden container to keep humidity up? And lights only 2" away from the hc? Interesting, thanks for sharing.


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## AaronT (Apr 26, 2004)

king kong said:


> I do not have a free source of low KH RO type water. My well water is very hard so would need to buy a RO unit to keep up with the water changes unless I recycle the same tank water.


If you have a way to collect rain water you can use that. It's generally pretty darn pure and also free.


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## niko (Jan 28, 2004)

denske said:


> Good info niko, you didn't have to have any type of lid on your wooden container to keep humidity up? And lights only 2" away from the hc? Interesting, thanks for sharing.


No lids. None at all.

See, we are all victims of looking at our hobby in very narrow ways. That is so partly because of the internet which as we all know now spreads mediocrity and bad taste as nothing else to this point. I already explained why the aquatic plants do just fine in open air; Because all they want to do is to get out of the damn water. Under the water there is constant competition for everything. Above the water things are completely different. That's where the plants want to be. But we want them under the water. That has lead us to do things that are just outright ridiculous - creating environments that are not found anywhere in Nature. And calling them "natural" on top of that. Or "necessary" because the glass box is not Nature you see...

Best approach of all is to read the forums for amusement only. Look at your own tank and figure out things for yourself. The joy that that will bring is why you got in the hobby in the first place. Don't tell me now that you got into the hobby to read the half-witted posts of people you do not and will never know that like to feel important. Like me.


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## king kong (Jul 2, 2012)

All aquatic plants prefer to grow out of the water. Let me think about this. Nice tank by the way niko.
One problem I am having is some sort of damp off. Not just crypt melt. I get spongy stems on some of my crypt stems to the point of plant loss. If I smell the point of damage it smells just like a rotten aponogeton bulb.
Going to an orchid flasker soon to see if there is a chemical I can use to treat this stem rot with.
Any clues on this one?


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## king kong (Jul 2, 2012)

Have a mystery guest in my 55 today. My C nurii decided to show off its hidden (crypto) club (koryne) today. This is my second inflorescence from a C nurii submerged in this tank.


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## saddletramp (Sep 16, 2012)

Very nice! You must be doing something right!!! And you want to change things?? Perhaps details on exactly how you do things would inspire all of us. 
Grown emerged, the spathe would stay much shorter. Submersed, the spathe has the tendency to "reach" for the surface, where it could be pollinated.
Great job. Bill


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## king kong (Jul 2, 2012)

saddletramp said:


> Very nice! You must be doing something right!!! And you want to change things?? Perhaps details on exactly how you do things would inspire all of us.
> Grown emerged, the spathe would stay much shorter. Submersed, the spathe has the tendency to "reach" for the surface, where it could be pollinated.
> Great job. Bill


It is very simple. C nurii loves my well water. Bullosa and Hudoroi hate my water. So that means nurii can handle dissolved salts and solids.


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