# Jungle Val - what governs how it spreads vs grows



## Linwood (Jun 19, 2014)

I have two tanks with Jungle Val. All this in both came from a couple of small pieces I bought long ago. It first spread in one tank, I moved pieces of it to the second.

First tank is 45G, gravel + ecco complete, shallow, second is 220G blasting sand (much deeper). Both are low tech, low-med light, with excel and added ferts.

Here's the odd thing and reason for the question. 

In the small tank it grows reasonably tall, but stays thin (1/4" to 1/3" wide leaves), and very frequently puts out runners to spread.

In the large tank, it grows very tall very fast, the leaves are 2-5x the width (lots of 1" wide show up), and the actual plants stay in an almost bush-like form and rarely spread. I'd say 80% of what's in that tank are pieces I moved.

I've tried trimmer aggressively, as well as letting it grow long (up to about 6-7'), and neither seems to affect its propensity to not spread.

Note both seem healthy and happy and growing, this is not a "it is not doing well", it is "they are doing differently". One is a bush almost like a sword, one is more like grass. 

Is it the sand depth? Something else? 

By the way, I'm not saying this is a real problem. I do want it to spread, but if it doesn't I can transplant from the small to large tank. This is more about understanding why.

I probably should have put a ruler in these for scale, I've tried to size them to more or less the real size, the horizontal one may be a tad too small, but it gives the correct idea. The larger tank plants really dwarf the ones in the small tank. 

And they are from the same stock. I never bought but one small bunch of val, almost a year ago.


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## Immortal1 (Feb 18, 2015)

You offer up some very interesting questions. I got some jungle val for my 20 gallon tank. Had medium to high light, aquarium gravel and really no ferts at all. The tall leaves eventually died off leaving behind what short thin leaves about 3-5" tall. Over the course of 2 months the main plant has sent off runners and until the recent pruning, I likely have 30+ individual plants. I trimmed out about 10 of these little plants and put them into the 75 gallon tank with eco complete. Both tanks are now getting ferts & cO2. If the cuttings grow tall, it would likely be exactly the same as your tank.

Look forward to comments for the knowledgeable Planted Tank crew.


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## NotCousteau (Sep 25, 2014)

That's interesting. I have val in my 33 long, sand with root tabs tank and some in my 10 gallon, eco-complete with root tabs tank. Substrate depth is about the same in both tanks. Low-light for both tanks, LED in the 33 and CFL in the 10. No fertilizers in either.

The val in my 33 long grow just like the ones in your big tank. The val in my 10 gallon grow like the ones in your small tank. Maybe it's related to substrate particle size? I have no clue; just guessing.


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