[fabry]

I have been keeping B. aubertii in my tanks since several years.
I have been seeing it growing in its habitat in Singapore too.

Blyxa aubertii is a huge plant suited to very large (high, especially) acquaria.

In my tanks and in perfect conditions B. aubertii reaches an height of around 1 meter (3.3 feet) with a leaf width of at least one inch.

Since it produces also a very large rosette with a huge number of leaves it is even more cumbersome than Vallisneria gigantea.

One of these plants takes almost half of one of my big tanks (360 liters - 95 gallons net)

The leaves lay down for at least one foot on the water surface (which is two feet above the gravel).


In general, a wonderful rosette plant for gigantic tanks.

That' s why it is not so used in the hobby.

In normal tanks you can keep it when it is small (for few months) than you have to throw it away

 

[fabry]

Hi guys,
sorry for the delay but I was away for job.
I currently cannot take pictures of my big B. aubertii because it is in the low tech aquarium I keep in my mother's house (which is almost 1000 miles away from where I live now).

But I should have some pics in where it is visible in the background and I am looking for these pics in my past backups.
I will upload them as soon as I find them.

Now I have a couple of plantlets that were born from the seeds of the mothers in the smaller tanks I keep at home.
They are still small, but they grow fast.

Anyhow if you want to see some pics of this plant and have an idea of its form in normal natural conditions you can start by taking a look at the description on Dennerle site.

http://www.dennerle.info/EN/HG05UG01.htm

Enter Blyxa in the "scientific name" field and you will see a description of the two Blyxa species

Dennerle says that it can usually grow up to 60 cm (about two feet), but in my experience in perfect habitats it can grow up to around three feet (about 1 meter).

To have an idea of how big it can grow take a look at the following picture

http://www.aei-andaman.com/SUTAWA/SUN (2).JPG

and to see this plant in its natural habitat you can take a look at this picture

http://www.ibanorum.netfirms.com/blyxa-ba010706.jpg

I know there are possibly two plants closely related: Blixa aubertii and Blixa echinosperma, which for some taxonomist are just subspecies.

I have no idea about how to tell the difference nor if there could be differences in size (so I do not know which one is the one I have).

I also know that there could be a great variability inside the same species in dimensions.

I took my Blyxa some years ago in a shop in Singapore.
They were sold as loose plant in single envelopes for about 50 cents of US dollars each.
They were coming from TEO's aquatic plant supplier, a water plant nursery well known in Singapore that supplies plants to most of the shops in Singapore but that unfortunately doesn't ship abroad.

I have also seen this plant in the wild in the central catchment area in Singapore where it can grow quite big.

In my experience it grows better (and bigger) in big tanks with deep substrate (mine is volcanic coarse sand) , under medium to low light (0.5 - 0.3 W/l) and heavy fertilization in the water column (good CO2 addition too).

I also noticed that the growth of this plant can vary considerably according to the growing conditions.

When I tried to cultivate it in smaller more "high tech" tanks under high light (1W/l or more) it always remained much smaller (altough with much richer colors).

The same plant, once transferred in the bigger tank under the conditions said above and left undisturbed, started growing up to its maximum dimensions.

At its maximum dimensions it is very impressive, but hardly usable in aquariums.

It can have up to 100 hundred leaves and since it is a rosette plant the leaves don't grow straight from bottom to top, but forms a wide rosette.
In this way it can cover an area of almost two by two feet.
It is also very diffucult for other plants to grow in its shade.

Because of all these characteristics I find this plant almost unusable in normal acquaria, unless when in its smaller form (because its young or maybe because of the growing conditions) as a background