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Anyone ever kept water sprite before?

I started with two quarter sized plants about a month ago, 29 gallon tank with only a 20 watt bulb up top, pH at about neutral and water on the softer side (KH 4, GH 10), and now the plants have covered half the tank with these fast growing plants.

First off, for low light, floating these plants up top is amazing.

However, what kind of water sprite do I have? It had some leaves up to 4 inches long. They look like mega versions of the common water sprite that I've seen planted in the substrate, and they have these fine, hanging roots that are pretty in and of themselves. Any guesses?

Thanks,

Eric

Hi,

It IS a really fast growing plant you probably have Hygrophila Difformis, the shapes and sizes of the leaves change depending the tanks conditions, they can be really short and meaty or huge and delicate looking, the reason they are growing so fast it's simply because they liked your set up/

Hi ,

It's probably just plain old water sprite. It does all of those things you mention. It can grow huge very very quickly. It's also a very nice floating plant, the dangling roots are quite intersting.

My own experience with it is that it even a small bunch can become very large very quickly and then like to break apart into tens of floating plants. To be honest I've given up on it, even in hi tech CO2 tanks I've seen it do this fall apart trick and just don't use it anymore, even though it is a very pretty plant.

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Some days you're the pigeon and some days you're the statue.

Remember that age and treachery will always triumph over youth and ability.

Here is how it grows in a high light (3.5 WPG) CO2 injected tank.

It doesn't take it long to overtake everything. If you want to grow it like this, anytime you see a branch starting to grow roots, cut it off the main stem. If you dont, it will slowly break off into several (IMO "annoying" pieces. Just keep it trimmed and it grows beautifully...

Like this http://webpages.charter.net/bucky/images/fish/fp/watersprite.jpg

Here's a pick of what I have:

http://www.petfish.net/sprit.htm

Not my picture. Ah, here's the exact one I have:

http://www.pets-warehouse.com/plants/plantpic62.htm

It's the picture on the upper right. Looks different from the planted water sprite.

Eric