I am actually quite surprised that your Anthurium is thriving. I have always had a tough time keeping them alive the traditional way, in a pot. I consider myself fairly good at keeping plants alive. I may have to try one in one of my tanks, that may just be the way that it finally works! You'd think they would do fine in my Florida yard but outside here is just a hair too far north so one in every third winter is just cold enough to kill them off.
my new MONSTERS to be: Black Mangroves...
- Thread starter MaddMaxx
- Start date
These grow wild in my backyard as small trees, the seeds wash in by that thousands in the fall and many germinate. This tends to grow higher up the beach and therefore a bit drier then red mangroves, so don't keep it too wet. If it is happy it will eventually put out a carpet of "breather" roots about 6" high that grow up (!) from the soil instead of down like most roots. These surround the plants in the wild. This species will also tolerate a light freeze will no ill effects.
Give it a try in your tank. After reading the wikilinks, I'm actually planning on trying to cut off the top few knuckles and repropagate some more tank planters.
Interesting, from what I'd heard before they were fairly happy submerged. Growth has been sloooooow lately tho, so I'll try moving them up and giving them a dry/wet boarder.
UPDATE: It's mangrove seed dropping season in Central East Florida. It's illegal to harvest seedlings that have already sprouted leaves but legal to harvest as many as you like if they have not sprouted leaves or roots.
My red mangroves had over grown my algerium, growing above the light source so I pulled them all out and planted them along the river. About a week ago I collected Black, Red and White mangrove seeds. The Reds are fastest growing as you can see, two blacks in the glass cylinder and one white have started to sprout also. The white requires dryer soil and more fresh water so once a week, to simulate rain, I pour a little RODI water into the glass cylinder. They still get plenty of saltwater though in between "rain-storms". This algaerium is connected to my 17 gallon reef tank.
ART
oh, and the spotlight you can see on the side of the algaerium is mostly for heat as mangroves need lots of heat to germinate and the house is air conditioned. There is also two old style power compacts lighting the whole algaerium system which includes cheato, lettuce seaweed, calurpa of several types and plenty of regular hair algae which is eaten by a long spined black sea urchine and a lawnmower blenny. There is also some Red Dragon's Tounge algae in there....
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So thanks to my fans who I'm sure are still watching this thread; its been 11 mos today since my last update:
A lot has happened in the last 18 mos and I lost a lot of interest in keeping up with the tank; mainly after a botched and extended move, I lost a lot of my plant stock. I'm not sure if it was exposure, lack of water changes... in the end I only have one Mangrove and a small piece of Cat Palm hanging on... and the Scale continues to plague me to point of exhausting and I've pretty much given up on it.
The good news is... the Mighty remaining Mangrove is officially 4 years old and HUGE!
(these pics are already 6 months old but pretty accurate, I'll try to clean up some of the Scale and post some new ones soon)
A lot has happened in the last 18 mos and I lost a lot of interest in keeping up with the tank; mainly after a botched and extended move, I lost a lot of my plant stock. I'm not sure if it was exposure, lack of water changes... in the end I only have one Mangrove and a small piece of Cat Palm hanging on... and the Scale continues to plague me to point of exhausting and I've pretty much given up on it.
The good news is... the Mighty remaining Mangrove is officially 4 years old and HUGE!
(these pics are already 6 months old but pretty accurate, I'll try to clean up some of the Scale and post some new ones soon)
