What will my pothos do next? Vote after reading!

[knifegill]

I have a pothos cutting in my HOB that is able to grow new roots but lacks the ability to grow new vines. It is comprised of nothing but one deformed leaf on a short length of vine, then roots are popping out all over the bottom of the vine piece into the filter space. What do you think it will eventually do? Vote or comment if you know something I don't!

 

[tyl089]

I never put pothos directly into the filter, always inside the aquarium directly.

Think the filtered water may not have enough nutrients for the pothos, so I think it will take a while for new leaves to sprout.

 

[knifegill]

Oh, the rest of my pothos are really taking off. This is the only one that just can't grow. You should see it, the parts it would need to possess in order to sprout a new leaf just aren't there. Another picture I need to take now!

 

[tyl089]

so there's more pothos inside the filter then? Might just be a weak sprout in that case, try to put it separately inside a cup and see if it will sprout out then. I love those things, big root systems that just suck up a lot of pollutants, and gives a nice deco to the tank.

 

[knifegill]

All my pothos are in my filters. It's too much of a pain to find ways of dangling them into the tank around the edges.

The water in the filters is practically identical to the water in the tank. What makes you think otherwise? I mean, there are potentially fewer particulates in the water as it exits, but the other nutrient elements remain essentially the same as far as I know. If a filter were removing nutrients so efficiently that a single pass could render water devoid of dissolved nutrients, I'd buy it or build it!

 

[bigbadfish711]

These plants are so very hardy. In high school we had a green house filled full of plants and pothos was one of the plants we grew. You can take a very small cutting and place in very wet soil or suspend it in water and it will grow. As long as you have viable section of vine it will grow.

 

[tyl089]

unfiltered tank water should have higher ammonia level from fish excreting them out and plants supposed to take ammonia directly as a nutrient source instead of the nitrates after nitrification process ie water coming out of the filter. thats what i was always told, and thats why i always put the pothos directly into the tank instead of the filter.

 

[aclockworkorange]

unfiltered tank water should have higher ammonia level from fish excreting them out and plants supposed to take ammonia directly as a nutrient source instead of the nitrates after nitrification process ie water coming out of the filter. thats what i was always told, and thats why i always put the pothos directly into the tank instead of the filter.

Your filter doesn't instantly remove ammonia, nitrites, etc. It never removes noticeable nitrates (to my knowledge I have yet to see a media that is proven to reliably remove significant amounts of nitrates in a standard filter).
Beneficial bacteria grows all over the surface of your tank as well.

 

[tyl089]

I'm not counting nitrates, just ammonia, and I've heard plants want to use ammonia first as nutrient source than nitrates. Plants will use nitrates, but only if there's no free ammonia present. so, my thinking was that a fish tank's water should have more ammonia then the filter. yes, nitrobacter is always on tank surfaces, but a filter is supposed to concentrate the bacteria inside the filter.

That's what I do with my pothos anyway, to each his/her own, and I still suggest to put that pothos that isn't sprouting into a separate container just to it may have the room to develope.

 

[knifegill]

You can take a very small cutting and place in very wet soil or suspend it in water and it will grow. As long as you have viable section of vine it will grow.

Yes, but that section must be viable! As I understand it, a leaf by itself can no more grow roots than can the hand of an axolotl regenerate an entire animal. It has to have the tuberous cell mass that usually presents as a brown bump. Pothos cuttings cannot be started by the leaf alone. A small part of the vine found at the base of the leaf is where roots are generated. And the cavity made where the leaf connects is where new vine/leaves can prutrude. But my plant was scorched when I put an incandescent light bulb in my lamp after my CFL died. So this piece has roots and an incomplete leaf. As of now, the vine is getting thicker and thicker and a few new roots are sprouting.


As for the amount of ammonia found before and after the filter, they are almost exactly the same. The fish urinates and levels rise by .0001 or something like that. It's almost instantly diluted into the entire volume of tank water. The ammonia from the urine may pass through the filter a few times before it has enough exposure time to be processed. For what you are imagining to actually happen, you'd have to unplug your filter, squirt pure fish pee into it via the intake, sit there for a few minutes and wait, then turn the filter back on.