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A friend gave me a clump of Water Sprite to try in my tank but i'm not sure if it will work out. I have a 29 gallon with a 20 Watt Colormax bulb. The only other live plant i have is some Java Fern on driftwood. He had his covering the entire surface of his tank and i thought it looked interesting. Any info would be appreciated.

If you leave it floating it might grow well. If you try to root it, it probably won't get enough light. Other than that it's a brittle fast growing plant. Good luck.

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Critical Fertilator: The Micromanager of Macronutrients

Leave it floating! If you root it it will not do good at all! I have some rooted in my 10g with plenty of light close to the plant and it is disappearing on me. I have had no luck with this plant at all.

"If you're afraid you'll make a mistake, you won't make anything."
-Family Circus

If the plant you are referring to is Ceratopteris thalictroides, then this should be treated as a floating plant. Do so and it will stage a campaign for world domination starting with your aquarium!

Given conditons to its liking, it will grow like the Triffids gone mad. It doesn't need really intense light to grow, but tends not to like being rooted too deeply beneath the surface. Try persuading it to root in a shallow spot atop a piece of bogwood that's reaching toward the surface, and see if it grows over the bogwood the way that Java Moss and Java Ferns do. If so, you 'll have a nice display.

Oh, and watch out - if it DOES like your aquarium, it will reproduce at a rate that will be the envy of some bacteria. It will throw off baby plantlets mike machine gun bullets and you'll have a LOT of fun figuring out where to put the surplus!

In my experience, if it takes a liking to an aquarium, it goes berserk and leaves you harvesting bagfuls of the stuff out of the aquarium periodically. Mind you, if you want an ammonia and nitrate hoover, this plant is pretty good. If you have a power outage, this stuff could mean the difference between your fishes expiring from ammonia poisoning, and surviving the power outage. In that respect it's like Amazon Frogbit, but not quite as rampant when given a nutrient overload. However, it tends to be fairly rampant even under normal circumstances if it's happy in your aquarium, so watch it like a hawk!


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002