# Ensuring tissue culture success



## Jvidi (Dec 9, 2014)

For a few years now these plants have been flooding our hobby. At seemingly great prices for the quantity and healthy of what you get, not to mention the ease of transportation and long shelf life what is to dislike? I have bought a few and have yet to have great success. After searching the web I cannot find any info on how to plant, or ensure their success. I'm hoping for people to put input here then I will edit it into a guide after I get some advice and buy some more to create a picture guide


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## Maryland Guppy (Dec 6, 2014)

I recently purchased a Crypt Balansae from TopFin sold at a Petsmart for $9 or so.
Very crunched up in the bag, covered in gel and mess. Very green with lots of roots.
Placed in a tray with my tank water and proceeded to pick apart and used a soft bristle tooth brush on the roots.
I got 3 plants out of this cleaning that took about an hour.
Actually cut with scissors, roots so intertwined I could not separate them.
10 days now, no Crypt melt, 6-7"tall and leaves are still straightening out.
Very few dead leaves on the bottom I will have to trim soon.

Good plant for me I would recommend.
Also new growth showed within 7 days.

I have seen many that spent way too many months in the store.
I searched through a dozen to pick mine.


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## Bushkill (Feb 15, 2012)

The only flooded stores I've seen are Petsmart and Petco. The prices I saw were just out of line for what you get. As for the sterility thing, I've yet to introduce anything other than snails from LFS plants, and I have no issues with snails whatsoever. I still buy plants at the LFS I work with. They take my guppies and angels in barter at times also; which the box stores will never do.

Sincerely,

Not sold.


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## Jvidi (Dec 9, 2014)

I appreciate your opinion, but as stated before I'm looking mostly for people's successes with these plants. If anyone has any advice on how they were able to get these plants to grow well please post about it. Thank you


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## SueD (Nov 20, 2010)

I've bought the Petsmart ones and just planted as I would any other plant. My tanks are low tech, little if any fert - maybe Flourish once in a while, Excel more often. They are small plants so they don't have the initial impact that a larger, non-TC plant would when added to a tank. 

As far as what you get for your money, you do have to look at the plants carefully in the store as often they will have been there too long and have started to rot. But as far as quantity, in the attached photo, the cyperus helferi at the back came from one package as did the two anubias on the left of the driftwood. There is a 3rd anubias on that same wood that was in one of the tubes. Since I'm only using sand, I added a couple of root tabs for the helferi but it's slow growing. The 3rd pic is after about 3 weeks.


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## treyLcham (Sep 9, 2014)

I got a bag of wendtii green and also I got helferi and so far so good there was a ton of helferi in one bag!!!












that's just a small amount that is showing in the picture! There was about 3full size ones that I made about 8plants out of! And the wendtii is very small as you can see and that I only got 3plants out of. If I had to do over again I wouldn't have gotten the wendtii as its not worth the price since I can get a small pot with wendtii green that has upwards of 25plants


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## aquarium hippy (Feb 7, 2013)

I have purchased a few of these TC plants from Pet Smart and have had good success with them. I just float them in a bowl of water for a day and remove all the gel from them. I separate using an exacto knife. and just try and make sure there are some roots with each section.


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## Bishop61 (Oct 18, 2014)

I bought two packages each of Pogostemon Helferi and Staurogyne Repens from Petsmart... and planted them in my tank after cleaning them and dividing them as much as possible. They have grown like crazy with no melting or other issues. I am surprised to say that the experiment went far better than I had expected, and I would highly recommend these plants... and least the one i bought anyway :wink:


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## Verivus (Jan 6, 2015)

I have bought several Top Fin tissue cultured plants from Petsmart/petco... crypt wendtii, DHG, s. repens, downoi, alternanthera reineckii cardinalis, anubias nanas... not one has died on me yet and the number of plants you get is pretty generous.


The only downside is that they grow kind of funky sometimes -- twisted, emersed form, etc., so it takes a few weeks for them to look 'normal'. For example, my DHG looked completely dead the first couple weeks while it was converting to its submerged form, but once the dead stuff was gone the new grass looked excellent. The downoi and cardinalis also looked really funky, but after a few weeks most of them were big enough to separate.


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## WDIK (Feb 26, 2015)

Hmmm. I bought a Micranthemum "Monte Carlo" tissue culture and didn't know I was supposed to remove it from the gel. I just planted it in the substrate with a little sprinkled on top to keep it from floating.

It has been in my tank for a couple of weeks and is hanging in there, but doesn't appear to really be "growing". Will it just take a while to adjust, or did I mess up by not removing the gel?


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## renesis (Dec 4, 2014)

The gel needs to be removed.. It contains sucrose which outside of the sterile container that the plants were growing, will grow mould that will spread to the roots/plant.


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## Canis (Jun 4, 2014)

I got some different crypts and anubias from the Petsmart TC and they exploded in growth without any melting right away.


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## DirtDevilDTOM (Nov 10, 2014)

I've also had great luck with the TopFin stuff from Petsmart. I have tried both the Pogestemon Helferi and Staurogyne repens. There are plenty of plants in each bag after removing the goop and trimming them down. I started trimming my s. repens in about a week and a half which I thought was great.


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## Xiaozhuang (Feb 15, 2012)

Can't comment on the TopFin ones, but I know some shops now carry the Tropica line as well. Have used the Tropica ones with very good success; they seem superior in everyway except starting size....

Healthier and transport easily; free of bugs/snails/etc, and vigorous growth once planted. Also, the number of plantlets can be deceptive because they start out so small. For example, all the AR mini in the tank below was from a single cup of Tropica tissue culture, fully grown after 6 weeks. This makes them very cost effective. 










As mentioned above, just remember to wash away the gel, and make sure the smaller plantlets get enough light/flow at their substrate level.


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