# scarlet temple (Alternanthera Reineckii) experience



## Seadon (Mar 24, 2014)

Anybody have any experience, tips or knowledge on growing this plant, or just general info on how it grows.


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## Seadon (Mar 24, 2014)

Also does anyone know the minimum light requirements


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## aquarist (Aug 29, 2012)

I have had a type of Alternanthera Reinecki for several months now, I only have high light and co2 injected aquariums, but it seems to grow great in both my aquariums. I do notice in my 10 gallon that it will grow more compactly with smaller leaves, and when I move it into my 75 gallon it will grow longer leaves and grow a bit taller. It is an easy plant to split and turn into more, since it is a stem plant you can wait and it will start to grow roots out of the stem and you can cut it below that and plant, or you can simply trim the top 1/3 of it off and replant and it will grow a root system. I do think this is a moderately fast growing plant, I have at least doubled the amount that I own already in the past two months. It looks great and adds some amazing color to an aquarium, I think pretty much anyone can grow it. In lower light conditions you may not be able to get as good of color as you would in high light but I believe it will still grow well.

Here is a photo from a couple weeks back.


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## devilduck (May 9, 2012)

Definitely a light loving plant. It also likes some room around it. At lowered light levels it will grow taller and may loose its lower leaves.


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## nofearengineer (Mar 20, 2013)

My experience is that it wants as much light as you can afford, and don't bother without pressurized CO2. Others may have had different experiences. These are mine.


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## Seadon (Mar 24, 2014)

Anyone know about fertilizer dosing?


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## Seadon (Mar 24, 2014)

nofearengineer said:


> My experience is that it wants as much light as you can afford, and don't bother without pressurized CO2. Others may have had different experiences. These are mine.



That is the same experience I am having as well, unfortunately I don't have co2, and won't for at least a month :/, but you can definitely tell that the plant is not growing as it would provided co2


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## aquarist (Aug 29, 2012)

A few picture of a baby plant that I've had growing for about a week.


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## Seadon (Mar 24, 2014)

aquarist said:


> A few picture of a baby plant that I've had growing for about a week.



Now is that with or without co2, high, medium or low light?


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## Seadon (Mar 24, 2014)

Now I'm wondering if it will survive through the next month in the lower light I have it in wIthout co2 or if I should switch my lamp back to high light and just deal with the algae


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## Sinhalaya (Feb 28, 2014)

I'm no expert, but I'm under the impression that any red plant requires high light. I never had any luck with red plants under low light.


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## Mirkinator (Jan 13, 2014)

Yeah you need good lights and CO2 for this lil beauty. The more of each teh wider and more full the leaves become. I have it in a lower CO2/light tank and they are pretty thin and grow very slow. In my hi CO2, Hi light tank leaves grow about 4x wider and fuller


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## Seadon (Mar 24, 2014)

I think I'm going to switch back to my quad lamp 36" aquaticlife after today and just handle the algae, at least for a week or two until it has an established root system...what kind of substrates are you guys using/recommend?


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## aquarist (Aug 29, 2012)

Seadon said:


> Now is that with or without co2, high, medium or low light?
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


So that baby and several of my mothers are in a 10 gallon with a 26watt CFL bulb and co2 injection. The co2 is new however, I just upgraded my 75 gallon aquarium's co2 system and hooked up my paintball co2 system to my 10 gallon. I was growing them fine with the following:

10 gallon tank
26 watt cfl (equal to a 100 watt regular bulb)
5 ml excel daily
1/2 ml flourish 3 times a week
1/2 ml iron 3 time a week

I have stopped dosing the excel because I now have co2 injection but I am still dosing those fertilizers until they run out and then I will be swapping back to dry ferts on this tank. I am just trying to clean out my aquarium chemical collection., I have amassed a pretty big collection of stuff from sales and what friends have given me, need to get rid of most of it, so best way to do that is use it I suppose.


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## Seadon (Mar 24, 2014)

aquarist said:


> So that baby and several of my mothers are in a 10 gallon with a 26watt CFL bulb and co2 injection. The co2 is new however, I just upgraded my 75 gallon aquarium's co2 system and hooked up my paintball co2 system to my 10 gallon. I was growing them fine with the following:
> 
> 10 gallon tank
> 26 watt cfl (equal to a 100 watt regular bulb)
> ...



If you could, I would love to see a picture...are they growing tall and stringy or short and full?


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## aquarist (Aug 29, 2012)

All the pictures above are of some of my plants, but here's a photo of the mother plants, they are growing compact but I have a LOT of light in there. Was also growing them under a 10watt LED but they seemed to bleach them a little. The mothers have some GDA on the lower leaves but other than that they are nice and healthy.


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## Seadon (Mar 24, 2014)

Is that the same plant from the first picture up above?..how long have you had this particular one, is this the one that you've had for a couple months?


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## flukekiller (Jun 4, 2013)

this is Alternanthera reineckii 'Mini' with just root tabs and 26watt 6500k cfl bulb

grew between 2in and up to 6in due to low light.


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## Seadon (Mar 24, 2014)

flukekiller said:


> this is Alternanthera reineckii 'Mini' with just root tabs and 26watt 6500k cfl bulb
> 
> 
> 
> grew between 2in and up to 6in due to low light.



A not so bad, I figured it would be a lot stringier with low light, did u have co2?


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## flukekiller (Jun 4, 2013)

no, actually opposite.. the stems got much thicker as it got taller.

no co2.


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## aquarist (Aug 29, 2012)

Seadon said:


> Is that the same plant from the first picture up above?..how long have you had this particular one, is this the one that you've had for a couple months?
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


So there are several different photos of different plants but all the same species. Just to clarify things a little in post number 3 that is a picture of one in my 75 gallon, in post 8 both of those pictures are of the same plant it is in my 10 gallon and that's about the size I would ship to someone, in post 16 is a picture of the mother plants I harvest plantlets from, like the one you see in post 8. 

I have had all the mother plants for about two months now, the plantlet in picture 8 is about one week since I cut it from the mother plant that is pictured in post 16. 

All of these are grown in high light aquariums with co2 and ferts.


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## Seadon (Mar 24, 2014)

aquarist said:


> So there are several different photos of different plants but all the same species. Just to clarify things a little in post number 3 that is a picture of one in my 75 gallon, in post 8 both of those pictures are of the same plant it is in my 10 gallon and that's about the size I would ship to someone, in post 16 is a picture of the mother plants I harvest plantlets from, like the one you see in post 8.
> 
> I have had all the mother plants for about two months now, the plantlet in picture 8 is about one week since I cut it from the mother plant that is pictured in post 16.
> 
> All of these are grown in high light aquariums with co2 and ferts.



When you harvest plantlets do you just too them and place the stem in the substrate? And if so how long until it develops roots? Do you use any rooting hormone?


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## aquarist (Aug 29, 2012)

Seadon said:


> When you harvest plantlets do you just too them and place the stem in the substrate? And if so how long until it develops roots? Do you use any rooting hormone?
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


In post 16 you can see a picture of the mother plants and if you zoom in you can see some roots, they will shoot out roots from the stem and then I will cut it below those roots when I am ready to harvest. A good rule of thumb is never take more than 1/3 from your mother plant. The new cut plantlet will already have some roots on it when I cut it from the mother plant and it will generally take around 1-2 weeks to get a good root system and around a month to become full established. If you wait for it to shoot out roots before you cut it from the mother plant it will be much healthier and have a much better chance at survival.


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## Seadon (Mar 24, 2014)

Yeah, I see it now, when I bought mine it had some roots further up the stem already, maybe I'll make some babies once I get my lights situated.


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## Raymond S. (Dec 29, 2012)

I think the light drives them mostly but mine don't have quite as bright of red as is
in the picture from Fluke. There is a leaf on the first picture, if you go down the left side of it to the one which almost the whole leaf is showing and pointing towards the left. The two new layers of leaves(two sets of two each) look like that one.
I got this plant about the 12th of this month. Those four leaves have grown since then. There is almost no space between the two sets of leaves but below that it is about 3/4 inch down to the next layer of leaves. The plant stem has three because of two forks so one in the sub divided into three at the top. One other stem has a couple of leaves on the top and the other stem unfortunately has three large leaves shading it so no growth there. But on one stem it has four decent sized leaves plus two new ones starting in about 14-15 days. 2 x recommended Excel doses daily/w 3.6 WPG.
In the tank/w 2.8WPG and no excel it has only grown two poor leaves so far.
Also poor color on this one.


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## Seadon (Mar 24, 2014)

I'm going to switch back to my fixture that was giving me 5.2 WPG and hope the extra light can compensate for lack of Co2 for now


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## morelight (Jun 2, 2013)

I have one scarlet temple plant and it's been in the tank about 8 months. Turned brown and looked just about dead. I added in a dose of Leaf Zone by API and less then two weeks it turned deep red and looks better than ever. I must have need some k2o and fe


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## THE V (Nov 17, 2011)

I'm playing with this stuff now. Just got some that was grown emmersed. It's taking some time to adapt and start to grow. On almost all of the lower nodes it started sending out roots. I've trimmed the stem in multiple places and am seeing good new growth on them all. I've got it spread across 3 different setups to figure out what it likes. 

It's not the fastest grower in my tanks but it has a pretty light red to reddish brown color. 

I'm setting them up for a two week business trip now. It will be interesting when I get home.


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## Seadon (Mar 24, 2014)

morelight said:


> I have one scarlet temple plant and it's been in the tank about 8 months. Turned brown and looked just about dead. I added in a dose of Leaf Zone by API and less then two weeks it turned deep red and looks better than ever. I must have need some k2o and fe



What kind of lighting are you using?


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## morelight (Jun 2, 2013)

the scarlet temple is in a 29gal and lighting is Finnex Ray2


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## omgwhiskey (Jan 6, 2014)

In my experience it is a very easy plant. I bought a small packet of scarlet temple from petco about six weeks ago, now it's taken over a big chunk of the tank and grown 10" tall, I trim and replant every other week.


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## Seadon (Mar 24, 2014)

omgwhiskey said:


> In my experience it is a very easy plant. I bought a small packet of scarlet temple from petco about six weeks ago, now it's taken over a big chunk of the tank and grown 10" tall, I trim and replant every other week.
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk



What type of lighting for what size tank do you have it under if you don't mind me asking, is seems as though it would be lower light to get so tall


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## omgwhiskey (Jan 6, 2014)

Seadon said:


> What type of lighting for what size tank do you have it under if you don't mind me asking, is seems as though it would be lower light to get so tall
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk



I have a finnex fugeray, just placed on top, not raised. Tank is a 12g.

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## Seadon (Mar 24, 2014)

You don't get any algae problems, or are you using co2?


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## bsantucci (Sep 30, 2013)

I have these in my 46g bow with high light. I use them in midground and they grow low and compact. I trim them usually about 1-2 nodes above the substrate and they come back bushier after that. Light level definitely affects how they grow. I just added a second LED to my tank so they will be getting very high light now and I am curious how they grow in the next couple of weeks.


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## omgwhiskey (Jan 6, 2014)

Seadon said:


> You don't get any algae problems, or are you using co2?
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk



Using DIY co2, also the photoperiod is split in two, or else algae. Being heavily planted also helps.


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## omgwhiskey (Jan 6, 2014)

bsantucci said:


> I have these in my 46g bow with high light. I use them in midground and they grow low and compact. I trim them usually about 1-2 nodes above the substrate and they come back bushier after that. Light level definitely affects how they grow. I just added a second LED to my tank so they will be getting very high light now and I am curious how they grow in the next couple of weeks.



Probably you'll see them grow 10+ inches! Also much larger leaves. I had to move mine as a background plant.


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## bsantucci (Sep 30, 2013)

omgwhiskey said:


> Probably you'll see them grow 10+ inches! Also much larger leaves. I had to move mine as a background plant.
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


I don't think so. I believe they will stay lower with broad leaves. These generally grow tall when stretching for light from what I see. Plus like I said, I grow these mid ground so I trim them to keep them compact and bushy.


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## omgwhiskey (Jan 6, 2014)

Here they are a week or so after the new light.


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## dru (Mar 9, 2013)

I can't keep the lower leafs from become transparent and falling off, my nerites love to munch on these leafs though

My light is strong enough to grow HC

Seachem NPK, Iron, Flourish/Excel


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## Seadon (Mar 24, 2014)

omgwhiskey said:


> In my experience it is a very easy plant. I bought a small packet of scarlet temple from petco about six weeks ago, now it's taken over a big chunk of the tank and grown 10" tall, I trim and replant every other week.
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk



How large are the plantlets you trim and replant? I just trimmed mine about an inch from the tops, just below where they were growing long white hair-roots and replanted the trimmings...trying to increase my patch.


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## Seadon (Mar 24, 2014)

bsantucci said:


> I have these in my 46g bow with high light. I use them in midground and they grow low and compact. I trim them usually about 1-2 nodes above the substrate and they come back bushier after that. Light level definitely affects how they grow. I just added a second LED to my tank so they will be getting very high light now and I am curious how they grow in the next couple of weeks.



I meant to pose the above ? To you as well...what size are your babies that you replant?


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## omgwhiskey (Jan 6, 2014)

Seadon said:


> How large are the plantlets you trim and replant? I just trimmed mine about an inch from the tops, just below where they were growing long white hair-roots and replanted the trimmings...trying to increase my patch.
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk



About two or three nodes from the top.


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## bsantucci (Sep 30, 2013)

Seadon said:


> I meant to pose the above ? To you as well...what size are your babies that you replant?
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


Just like others stated no more than 3 nodes tall. I don't replant tops anymore though I have a lot. I just sell them. The trimming now is to get them nice and bushy. 

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