Aponogeton Driving Me Nuts

[TammyLiz]

I have an aponogeton bulb that has gone crazy, sending up floating leaves and blooms like mad. Right now it has 4 or 5 blooms and over two dozen floating leaves. I pinch the floating leaves back and within a week, they are shading half of my 55 gallon tank once again. I am through with it. I ripped it out of the substrate and the root system surprised me, probably a hundred roots around 6 inches long. Now I don't know what to do with the thing. I've heard of putting them into a dormant state by putting them in the refrigerator, but I don't know if I should remove the mass of foliage and roots or leave it there...it would require a large container to hold it all. Or did I need to wait until the plant naturally started to die back? Should I just throw it away? Advice appreciated.

 

[flamingonhot]

Usually when the plant starts dying you need to clip the roots off, and place it in a container of cold water for more than a couple months.

Umost of the time, if the plant starts growing too much all you have to do is find the "flowering stem" and clip it off at the end. That's what worked for me...

Mine kept growing and growing, then one day it just died. I placed it in cold water for 2 months, put back in the tank, and it started to grow back.

 

[TammyLiz]

huh, well, I've tried clipping off the flowering stem, as well as the floating leaves, but it is such a tangle. Dozens of shoots all look the same at the base so I follow it down to figure out which I want and pinch that, but then I have like 15 more to go! And it is such a tangle...the floating leaves stick to my arm as I try to pull it back up out of the tank a little to pick another stem to follow down, and I'm yanking things all around. Sometimes the stem plants next to it come up out of the substrate and mix with the floating leaves I'm trying to remove. I guess I'm making myself sound like such a clutz, but really, its a struggle. So now you have a mental picture of me up almost to my armpits in the tank, making a mess, maybe you can understand why this plant bothers me.