# Growing Emersed



## BuffaloM (Jan 10, 2005)

I came back from vacation to a lot of green spot algae and stunted growth in my tank. After clearing up the algae on the glass, the plants are back to growing at their normal rate, but I've noticed that some of the lower leaves/existing leaves have algae on them.
I don't want to uproot and bleach every plant (that killed half of my plants last time I did it), but I thought that if I take a few out and grow them emersed that 1. they'll grow faster and/or 2. the algae will die off on its own in the air. I can then remove the lower algae covered leaves if there are any left and replant.
I was then going to rig up some sorta of micro indoor greenhouse, like some people use to start seeds in the early spring.

For those of you that have tried this before or just feel like giving some advice:

I was thinking of taking out an anubius nana, an amazon sword or two and some stemmed plants like hygro, and ludwigia.
Are any of these good/bad choices. I've read that the nana will grow faster emersed and that most amazon swords are grown this way to begin with.

I don't think dirt would be a good choice for a growing medium because I want to be able to clean the roots off easily without having to damage them before I put them back in the tank. So what kind of growing medium should I use? 
Rockwool
loose gravel
?

Will a normal plant fert work like miraclegrow etc, or should I use something else?

Do the plants need to be misted, or will they be ok on their own?

Anything I'm not thinking about? Am I going to bite off more than I can chew?

Thanks


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## Fosty (Oct 17, 2003)

You are going to need to keep the humidity high to grow any of those plants emersed. In my experience anubias nana does not grow much faster emersed.

Good Luck


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## kakulo83 (May 23, 2005)

The humidity definitely needs to be kept high. I am currently growing E. cordifolius, E. bleheri, E. Ozelot, and Anubius Barterii emersed in a 50gal covered with plastic wrap. I use small but powerful pumps to disrupt the water surface, they indirectly splash water on the leaves. 

The plants are in large pots with profile/flourite/peat moss. I don't know about A. nana but my A. Barterii is growing much faster (a new leaf every week). In the past I just slowly work the plants out of their pots and wash off the medium into a bucket with lukewarm water. Its amazing how much stronger the stems of E. Cordifolius become. Some leaves are huge, like 5" wide and 9" long. Anyway good luck!


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## Salamastre (Jun 19, 2005)

You need very high ambient humidity, 100% would be great for aquatic plants. You can achieve it by keeping your container airtight, and doing an air change and misting some 5 times a day, which soon becomes boring. The problem is that this high an humidity is great for fungus, algae and bacteria.

A very easy way to obtain a high humidity environment that will not allow many bacteria and spores to live (no algae, no rot due to fungus, no bad smell), is to put your plants in whatever suitable container (glass tank, rubbermaid, large plastic bag, whatever) covered in clear plastic. Put a few cms of inert media on the bottom, to keep the plants in place, or place them in pots (crushed lava rock, vermiculite, perlite, plastic pellets, whatever is handy), and add your fertilized water.

Put an airpump outisde the box, an run the air line with an airstone to an open jar inside the box. In the jar put water with 10% drusgtore peroxide.

You can get up to 100% humidty in an hour. The peroxide will kill spores and bacteria, and purify the air you are pumping in, but will not harm plants. And the pressure from the air pump will push air out, preventing anything from the outside contaminating. I specially love to do this using large plastic bags. The airpump will inflate it, and you get this cool balloon greenhouses, that look amazing when growing japanese flame mushroom (flammulina) in them.

I have used this setup to grow mushrooms, ferns and mosses with good success, and am just starting with java fern.

With the java ferns, I am trying an even cheaper simpler method: Cut a 2 litre soda bottle in half. Put 5 cms of perlite on bottom, fill up tp 3 cms with fertilized water, plant fern, put back on the other half of the bottle. The perlite wicks the water up, making it available to the plant. And perlite has such great surface area that a lot of evaporation takes place, and humidity is 96% according to my DIY hygrometer. I plan on doing only a weekly water change. Will keep you informed.

If you fill with too much water, not much evaporation takes place, make sure to set water line well below perlite line.

I hope this helps.


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## Troy McClure (Feb 22, 2004)

Awesome information, Sala!

I wanted to bump this up because I'm thinking about growing some Anubias nana emersed to spead up growth...if that's even possible. If it turns out well, I may try the two liter thing with some ferns.

What lighting would you suggest with the rubbermaid containers? I have a 150W 6500K metal halide that's not being used yet, but I'd like to use natural sunlight. If you're setting them outside, is there a problem with heat? Cold?


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## Troy McClure (Feb 22, 2004)

bump bump bump


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## JimmyYahoo (Aug 14, 2005)

Nice thread. Good info regarding the h202. Everything else seems very similar to hyrdroponics. After reading ive decided to have a go at trying to grow a microsword carpet in this manner. Im goin the el-cheapo route so well see if immersion works its magic.

thanks for the info and the bump.


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## Salamastre (Jun 19, 2005)

*Pictures!!!*

I don't own a digital camera, so I went and got this scanned.

Thess are my first cuttings. Plants are too expensive here, so I went to a big aquarium, and helped the staff clear some tanks of floating pieces of plant debris. What you se in the pictures is what I got, excepting pieces of hornworth and salvinia.

There is a crypt balansae, an indian fern, a java fern, java moss, pennyworth, an unidentified small hitchiker, and microsword.

In less than 2 months I had enough of each for a heavily planted 15 gallon and 2 nanos.










And JimmyYahoo, let me know if you think this qualifies as el-cheapo route 










Just sitting on the patio balcony, natural sunlight, no fertilizers. You can see some of the new mini sword in my tanks in this thread: mystery wild mosses 

And this is how pennyworth grows if you leave it emmersed and fertilzed. I'm want to try it for cooking.










Just used potting soil mixed with a little peat, and normal houseplant fertilizer.


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## JimmyYahoo (Aug 14, 2005)

Looking good Sala. Thats some great looking moss in the other thread too. I thought id post the setup im currently working with myself.










Shultz Aquatic soil and jobes fert sticks. Im a bit worried that the medium has too large a grain size to accommodate the microsword but well see how that goes. In the beginning i was pumping some co2 into the tank, sealed for the most part with saranwrap, to see if that would help any but on day two my 20lb tank ran out. Lighting im leaving on for 18/6 until i see significant algae growth.

Should prove to be an interesting experiment, ive heard that microsword grows pretty slow so im hoping this will speed up the process. I started with a very small amount of plant matter, so if this works my pocket book will be the happiest of all!


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## KShoes (Sep 29, 2009)

Sorry to revive an old thread with a stupid question but do all emersed grown plants need high humidity? I wanted to grow a java fern emersed out of a vase (roots in water, leaves above) but so far my google searches all show I need high humidity.


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