# Nesaea Red - some observations and pictures



## OVT (Nov 29, 2011)

I was thinning my Nesaea Red forest and decided to share some of my observation as I could not find much info on the web.

I got 3 ~6" emersed grown stems about 5 months ago. They promptly died but left behind 3 1/4" 4-leaved immersed offspring.
I let them float untended around the tank. About a month later they grew to ~4":










Nothing really too exciting but I did like their bright-pink stems and yellow/olive leaves.
The 3 babies got re-located to a quiet corner under an overhanging Nesaea Golden.
Fast-forward 3 months and this is what one of them looks like today:










with a half-decent close up:










The color of the leaves is not red red, it's a pleasant delicate pink/orange-red. The plant is a supper prolific brancher: every branch from the main stem has 2-4 smaller branches. The branches detach from the parent stem too easily. In fact, one just 'fell-off' while I was just arranging the plant. I have a lot of smaller stems floating all over the place.

It's also a pretty hairy plant: about 80% of the main stem is covered with roots. The base of each child stem has it's own set of roots. So when a stem detaches, it's already a rooted mini version of the parent.

What I find strange about the roots is that they are either healthy looking whitish roots or almost black in color. The white and black roots are next to each other and are of the same length.

The color of the stem seems to be age related. The older stems are dark olive/almost black mahogany in color, while the younger stems are bright lip-gloss pink, contrasting nicely with the leaves.

My other observation comes from my totally non-scientific 'experiment: I took 3 similar branches off the same parent and planted one each in a very high-light tank (in pic 2), in a medium-high light tank (pic 1) and one in then medium light tanks (it's all relative).

All 3 tanks have the same water, the same neglect, the same fertilization regiment, 3 slightly different generations of AquaSoil, and similar filtration. The only substantial difference is that the very high ligh tank is at ~82F and the other 2 are at ~78F.

I did not notice any significant difference in growth or branching rates among the tanks. Interestingly enough, I also did not notice much difference in leaf color: they pretty much stayed as in Pic 1, yellow/olive with a touch of pink at the tops (rather striking in itself). The lack of expected (by me) differences got me sort of pissed. When in doubt, dump. So, I started dumping Fe in all 3 tanks at about the same rate, ending up at 10ml every other day per ~ 60g. To my chagrin, the Fe dosing did turn the plants in very-high light tank to what you see in Pic 2. The plants in the other 2 tanks were unaffected. Grr on 2 accounts: a) this plants seems to need *both* very high light and Fe b) in my limited experience, this is the *only* plant that got 'redder' with Fe. All other plants in the 3 tanks could care less if they were Fe starved or overfed.

Not leaving well enough alone (_the worst enemy of Good is Better_), I embarked on another, equally 'scientific' project. Using the very high light tank as my lab, I left the majority of Nesaea in their quiet corner (the least amount of flow and rather crowded) and moved one plant right in the open in the path of the outflow. My thinking was that the plant with better access to light, and more importantly, better access to nutrients will get 'better'. Well, at least in that case, did not make any noticeable difference. The only exception being the plants in the corner collecting more BBA on the lower leaves, and the plant in the 'center' collecting more string algae .

In the end, I'm rather happy that I have 1/3 of a 65g full of Nesaea Red - a nice, not in your face, dense and bushy, easily trimmed and propagated contrast plant that does not grow with the speed of Cabomba.

I personally like it better in the 'non-red' state: we have plenty of red plants readily available. The yellowish/olive/pinkish plants are far and few between in my experience.

Give this guy (or gal) a try, add it to your 'African' collection.


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## spyke (Oct 14, 2010)

Lovely plant! 

Have you tried your hand at nasea "golden"? I have loads of it and love it so much. It has bright yellow/gold leaves with a pretty pink and green stem.


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## OVT (Nov 29, 2011)

Nesaea 'Golden' is one of my favorites:


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## spyke (Oct 14, 2010)

Sweet. Yours looks more... Spiraly than mine. Mine also seems more gold than yellow. here is some of mine that is freshly trimmed and growing back.


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## Kyrol (Feb 24, 2012)

Mine looks like garbage. I've done everything I can think of to get it to a nice red color but I end up with the tops of the leaves looking like they are burnt, But the bottoms of the leaves are bright fire red.

I've adjusted my lighting to just about anything imaginable. I'm using Root Medic fertz liquid and root tabs I've adjusted my fertz from the normal 125g I was dosing to 200g worth of fertz. I've even had my co2 cranked high enough that I emptied a 20 pound tank in 2 weeks and I just can't get it to look like your pictures.

It was sold to me as ludwigia cuba but i'm not sure thats what it is seemed to take off with the massive amount of co2 and the bump in lighting I've got about 14 stems I need to do something with soon.....


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## happi (Dec 18, 2009)

here's my 2cent, if i let the plant float around they grow very fast with multiple branches. i think this has to do with the more co2 and light available for the plants on the upper area, which is low on the bottom area of the tank. 

if anyone want to increase the growth of the plant such as HC, glosso etc, then let them float before planting them, this way you will have plenty of it.


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## HD Blazingwolf (May 12, 2011)

if FE helped the color its because of it being limited 
increasing other nutrients with it will likely deepen the coloring

what is ur po4 at? its strongly related to premature stem fall off in many plants although i have no experience with nesaea its worth looking into


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## Kyrol (Feb 24, 2012)

This is the best picture I have at the moment but bumping up the dosing a lot more micro and macro seemed to help the plant along (Color and Growth). I just can't get the tops of the leaves to not look burned.

How has propagating it gone? I've been hesitant since it's been a pretty slow grower in comparison to a lot of my tank I don't want kill it off for the sake of trying to get a few more stems.


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## plantbrain (Dec 15, 2003)

OVT said:


> I got 3 ~6" emersed grown stems about 5 months ago. They promptly died but left behind 3 1/4" 4-leaved immersed offspring.
> I let them float untended around the tank. About a month later they grew to ~4":



I did a similar thing and buried under some other plants and yes, it'll grow, but not develop that nice really and the color is not tasty like emergent growth.
I just found it not useful for trimming and gardening over time. 
Commercial growers do well with it, but not hobbyists, which is the only real reason it's still in the hobby. N pedicillata is another matter.

This method of planting and ignoring it in the back etc often works well, as the plant is shaded and protected from algae a fair amount until it has adapted to submersed growth. Then, in a few months, the submersed form does much better. This works for most stunted tip growth plants or ones that normally do poorly initially.

I've not been able to get the same growth like the emergent plant color.
Not seen anyone else that has either.


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## ThatGuyWithTheFish (Apr 29, 2012)

I've heard that Nasaea red is hard to be established, that it dies after some time.


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## Kyrol (Feb 24, 2012)

ThatGuyWithTheFish said:


> I've heard that Nasaea red is hard to be established, that it dies after some time.


I got mine from OVT in 2 days will be 4 months.... It's growing and shooting stems and roots everywhere. The first few weeks were touch and go it melted and dropped almost every leaf it had. 

As in mature plants die off after a while?


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## OVT (Nov 29, 2011)

Kyrol said:


> I got mine from OVT in 2 days will be 4 months....


I bet I am a month or so off in my timeline: apparently I had enough 4 months ago to share some of it with others.



HD Blazingwolf said:


> what is ur po4 at? its strongly related to premature stem fall off in many plants although i have no experience with nesaea its worth looking into


No idea, but I will test it. TY for the pointer. Out of ~30 plants, the dropped branches seem to be limited to the Nasaea and Macrandra Magenta under my conditions. As an aside, I do add Epsom Salt to my fert mix: 4 KNO3 to 1 MgSO4 7H2O



plantbrain said:


> I've not been able to get the same growth like the emergent plant color.


I have difficult time finding pictures of emergent form. The ones I got looked pitiful and half dead. Would be nice to see what my target looks like.



plantbrain said:


> This method of planting and ignoring it in the back etc often works well





happi said:


> if i let the plant float around they grow very fast with multiple branches


The approach of 'dump it and ignore it' worked well for me with other plants. I got a single ~6" stem of Rotala sp. ‘Bangladesh’ as an add-on that was melting right out of the bag. I put a plant weight on and just dumped it in the corner. Now that stuff grows really well.

Same with Myrio "mini" that I got 2 weeks ago: for whatever reason all stems were 3/4 rotting at the bottom. Eventually the healthy tops separated from the stems and I let them just float. A week later I am seeing them putting out nice new growth. A TPT member visiting my home saw the plant just as I got it and commented that it will not survive.

Back to Nesaea, the plant just seem to multiply and does not show signs of being ready die after 4-5 months. Propagation wise, I did not trim it yet, but the plant self-propagates via 'broken off' side-stems. So well in fact, that it's overtaking the tank.

The few pictures of submerged colors that I could find all show a single stem. Even though mine do not have that glossy-red sheen, the inter-nodes on what I have are much shorter, giving the plant a much bushier look. And the orange-red color is not too shabby either.

You can see the prolific branching in the next picture. The plant also does not exhibit that annoying habit of dropping bottom leaves and the color seems to be pretty consistent from the bottom up (the plant is ~14" tall)


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## plantbrain (Dec 15, 2003)

That's about the best I've seen someone grow it. 
I've had it grow for a year or more without issues, but it never got nice enough to really scape like other similar plants. Color also lacked vs the emergent growth I got. Mine also retained the leaves till the bitter end. I've not seen much success with the plant from other folks.
It got really branchy like yours.

I trimmed and replanted these in effort to have it look well behaved and nice, this was a mistake in general, best to leave it and let the branches grow out real well, then pinch them and leave the parent plant.


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## HD Blazingwolf (May 12, 2011)

man I'd love to try my hand at this plant if its so picky !!


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## OVT (Nov 29, 2011)

HD Blazingwolf said:


> man I'd love to try my hand at this plant if its so picky !!


I have a pretty good idea where you can find one or two.
Hint: I do ship on Sat


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## andkoni (Nov 6, 2005)

OVT said:


>


Still have it ?


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