# Plants growing sideways



## Gumby (Aug 1, 2005)

I cant seem to get many of my stem plants(Ludwigia, hygro, cabomba) to grow straight up. They either grow diagonaly or just plain horrizontal. From what I've read I think too much light may be the problem. I hope not, I paid a pretty penny for my lights and it'd suck not to use some of them 

Anyway, here's my lighting:
8x39w T5
4x54w PC

This is over a 135 gallon tank. 

Any advice is appreciated.


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## cousinkenni (Jan 24, 2005)

That is a lot of light, but I think it is more of the choice of plants. Cabomba and certain species of Ludwigia (repens especially) are notorious for growing sideways no matter how much or little light.

Ken T.


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## Bert H (Mar 2, 2004)

Man you've got 528W over a 125!!! :!: And you wonder why your plants are growing sideways. LOL. Heck, you could divide it in half and set up a second 125 with that much light! You'd better not let any nutrient ever come close to bottoming out (CO2 included) or you'll see instant algae farm.


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## Simpte 27 (Jul 16, 2004)

My ludwigia (ovalis or repens) does the same thing. I cured it by cutting it and replanting. After awhile, it learned whose boss!


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## ranmasatome (Aug 5, 2005)

i think the lights are okay... thats actually only works out to about 4.x wpg.. so its still not too much..but they are T5 so maybe a little higher.. i would think it would be choice of plants. the other thing that comes to mind would probably be that you have lights all in the centre but the sides and corners of your tanks are darker (usually the case) so your plants would tend to grow towards the direction of the lights.. hence the skewing in towards the centre?? just a guess..


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## AaronT (Apr 26, 2004)

That is way way too much light on a 125 gallon tank. On large tanks like that 3 wpg is still too much. Try toning the light down to 2.3 wpg or so and see if things don't improve.


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## Gumby (Aug 1, 2005)

Bert: I've already seen that happen, I had the worst case of green water ever when I first added the T5s. 

I've got the light euqally distributed, 8 T5s on the back, the 4 PCS on the front. And the Ludwigia that is growing sideways is L. repens. Perhaps I'll just have to replace the plants with something else. 

Thanks for the help everyone


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## victri (Mar 18, 2004)

Yeah, you've got to accept the fact that most stems will want to grow sideways with that amount of light. T5s have amazing penetration. I'd get rid of a couple of the PCs and just keep it all T5.


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## AaronT (Apr 26, 2004)

victri said:


> Yeah, you've got to accept the fact that most stems will want to grow sideways with that amount of light. T5s have amazing penetration. I'd get rid of a couple of the PCs and just keep it all T5.


Agreed.

Also, the green water is a result of excess ammonia. The light will certainly grow it faster though.


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## Gumby (Aug 1, 2005)

Meh, I suppose I could do that, but then I'd have to reposition my T5 fixture right over the center of the tank(its in the back now). Too much work...I'm lazy


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## arellanon (Jan 2, 2005)

Simpte 27 said:


> My ludwigia (ovalis or repens) does the same thing. I cured it by cutting it and replanting. After awhile, it learned whose boss!


HA HA HA! I LOVE that quote! I should do that to some of my plants.


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## Gumby (Aug 1, 2005)

I had an idea... Right now I'm running a 12 hour light cycle. Would cutting down the time the lights are on perhaps help me with this problem?


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## JimM (Aug 26, 2005)

Gumby said:


> I had an idea... Right now I'm running a 12 hour light cycle. Would cutting down the time the lights are on perhaps help me with this problem?


I think you could try that, tho the intensity of all your lighting is still there during the photo-period which could still promote the horizontal growth..

You might want to try 4 hours with half the lights off, 4 hours all on, 4 hours half off, this should start the plants off each day reaching towards the less intense lighting.. then blast them when they least expect it.


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## hsteve (Jul 9, 2005)

JimM said:


> I think you could try that, tho the intensity of all your lighting is still there during the photo-period which could still promote the horizontal growth..
> 
> You might want to try 4 hours with half the lights off, 4 hours all on, 4 hours half off, this should start the plants off each day reaching towards the less intense lighting.. then blast them when they least expect it.


 Call me nuts(or Canadian), But from my experience and also from what I've read, if the right wattage/gal. ratio is right, the duration of light should be OK... Tropical plants are naturally used to a certain amount of light per day, right? 
Changing the duration of light could possibly have some adverse affects, mainly plant die-off, algaer blooms, etc...
Just an uninformed opinion


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## JimM (Aug 26, 2005)

hsteve said:


> Call me nuts(or Canadian), But from my experience and also from what I've read, if the right wattage/gal. ratio is right, the duration of light should be OK... Tropical plants are naturally used to a certain amount of light per day, right?
> Changing the duration of light could possibly have some adverse affects, mainly plant die-off, algaer blooms, etc...
> Just an uninformed opinion


Im no expert but from what Ive seen anywhere between 10-12 hours seems to be ok. I agree with what others have said in this thread that Gumby's total lighting might be a bit overboard and could be contributing to the creeping growth. I think the tank might be ok with less lights, but if he wants to use them all a "noontime" simulation might work well.. I think this is a common practice with the pc/MH combo lighting setups.


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## Gumby (Aug 1, 2005)

I'd give the "noontime" approach a try, but the way my lights are set up is the problem.

Here's a diagram of how I have my lights set up:










I'm thinking maybe PCs on first, then T5s and PCs, then just T5s to end the day.

Any better ideas?


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## JaySilverman (Jun 19, 2005)

Plant in thicker groupings. If they don't have room to grow sideways they wont. With the amount of light you have over your tank, planting in large groups wont be a problem. And just so you know, my H.Polysperma grew sideways in 2.2wpg. So lowering your light will most likely not help at all.


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## defdac (May 10, 2004)

Gumby, what kind of bulbs is that you have?

The plant-growth-pattern is not depending upon watts/gal but changes in the far-red-portion of the spectrum. Plants senses this change and under strongly filtered canopies (shadow) they strive to reach the sky as fast as possible rendering them leggy. Under bright blue skylight the far-red-portion is completely changed and the plant spreads out over it's competitors.

You can read about the inner workings of it here:
http://www.cc.jyu.fi/~aphalo/old_pages/pdf/notes1.pdf

The sad part is that you will probably not be able to guess which bulb will suit your needs. Just because a bulbs have the right type of Kelvin (skylight apx 8000K) it doesn't mean it has the right far-red-proportions due to the fact that flourecent bulbs have discontinous spectral distributions (three to five nicely picked spikes in the blue, green och red-range).

But many have seen how well for example Aquarelle, Aquastar and Triton makes plants grow sideways and for example Gro-Lux or green filtered shadows from other plants making them leggy.

Aquastar exists as T5 nowadays and another good "keep-plants-down"-bulb is Deltec Aquablue plus. These bulbs also have a very nice and high PUR-efficiency making them more efficient than most bulbs at growing plants.


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## ringram (Jan 10, 2005)

I'll try to offer help here from what I've experienced and read. I have high lighting on my tank as well (55wx2 PC over a 20H) and the light enclosure *was* sitting right smack dab on top of the glass cover. A lot of my stem plants (hygro, ludwigia, "wisteria", "red foxtail") tend to grow somewhat horizontally and I was thinking that maybe I wasn't getting good spread on the lights --- ie, the distibution wasn't even. So, I made a very simple strut/leg out of wood for either side of the enclosure to raise the lights up about 3". I just did this yesterday, so its too early to tell, but I suspect that was the issue. Perhaps you have the same problem. If you want to get an idea of what I'm talking about, take a look at the picture I posted in the DIY section ---> http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/forumapc/showthread.php?t=9638
Good luck.
Cheers,
-Ryan


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## Gumby (Aug 1, 2005)

My plants are creeping the most under my T5s which are already 3 inches above the tank =\

As far as the bulbs go... In the T5 fixture, I've got them staggered, 10Ks and Aquamedic "planta" bulbs. The spectral analysis on their plant bulbs is different than any other I've seen. It peaks in red and blue, with little green in the spectrum. In the PC's I have Coral Life 6700K bulbs. 

That spectrum thing is interesting. I might look into getting rid of the 10k bulbs.


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