blue thumb

Yeah that's what I gather from all the reading very fragile in the state they sell it. Makes me wonder why they sell it this way only. They must have a high mortality rate themselfs. I wonder if you just left it in the cultured container till the plant literally busted out from growth before trying to plant it in substrate.

Justindew

Well when we did our group buy this is what I assumed I would do. However I did not realize how thin that culture gel is. Basically the plants get so beat up they end up arriving looking like a moss ball. I do wonder however why they don't farm this plant over there. As I would assume they would have far better luck then we do considering they have nice healthy plants to work with.

No pictures for now I have three new leaves total since going submerged though and the roots are really taking off. I can confirm that the new leaves are all a nice bright pink/purple though. I was a bit worried at first as my growth out of the water was very green with only a pink tinge to the outside of the leaves.

Kubalik

Hey there!

The color of the leaves may be depending on either ph or hardness or plainly substrate used . My little flamingo grown emerged stayed very small , even tho it split into 3 little plantlets and stayed very pink .Thats in AS new without anything , I lately added osmocote right under its roots and now new leaves are more green.I transfered one plant in my low tech nano , but it constantly getting uprooted by snails ( mts) . I just locked it in place with 3 small rocks , hope it will stay there.

Justindew

I experience the same issues with my mts they seem to knock everything out of the substrate. I just typically every other day put a handful or so of aquasoil back over the roots that have been uprooted. The flamingo actually hasn't experienced any melting suprisingly. I am using a combination of mts/ei root tabs and oscomote root tabs under it to make sure it has everything it needs. I have three new leaves since going submersed all very pink. Still seems to be a moderately slow grower though nothing like parva or bullosa though.

Tyger

Greetings,

Wow! What heart-breaking and difficult situation. I agree with the group-import of plants from overseas as being high-risk ventures (not for the faint of heart). In retrospect, I wonder whether importation in the future should be done with emersed plants that you re-pot emersed and stablize for several months prior to putting them in the tank.

It is my hope that the surviving plants fair well and that, as painful as this experience might have been, we can get a good crop growing state-side, and after members who lost their plants get the first harvest we can start spreading it around.

Again, best wishes,

~Tyger (Michael)~

blue thumb

I don't think there is very much success growing it even with people in Germany or we see more pictures in Google Images. There seems to be only the one picture available anytime you search for info on them. So I wouldn't feel to bad about not being able to grow it up to a big mother plant.

Justindew

I really don't think it is going to be very difficult to grow to be honest with you. It hasn't experienced any melt it is producing nice bright pink leaves and it is growing a moderate pace. It is however strange that you don't see it popping up much over seas. However I have seen a few pictures from someone in Europe who had a beautiful mother plant with several daughter plants. It was a beautiful crypt it had very bullated leaves and they were intense pink.

Klaus07

It could be because hybrids dont get much play in Europe. Species are preferred. Hybrids and sports are desired by few.

asukawashere

Not sure I buy that explanation - most of the cool hybrid swordplants these days are coming out of Europe (especially Germany). If hybrids were so unpopular, they wouldn't be developing so many of them.

Justindew

I am sure just like here there are those who don't like the hybrids. But I would find it highly unlikely that considering it is available at most LFS there that there wouldn't be a fair amount of people using this plant.