tiger lotus

[One_Trick_Pony]

wahst teh lowdown?

are teh hard to keep, hard to keep looking, good how much light do they reuqire, adn where in the world are they from?

 

[superjalami30]

Where they are from I'm not sure.
But what I do know is they need a lot of light.
You've seen mine havent you, its somewhere in this forum and the members pics forum.
I grew the one in my pic in ordinary substrate adding only Nutrafins "plants grow" under an 18 watt flourescent.
At one point I had a second light "beside" the tank and it would literally send a pad to the surface in just two days, one EVERY two days!
It was incredible, but so was the green spot algae on the glass.
It never did flower though, I've been told they flower, is this true?

Anyways, I have mine in my planted 40g now.

 

[jimbooo]

hi OTP.

great plant and really vibrant under good lighting and CO2 (at least 2.5 WPG i'd think)

here's a pic of mine just after planting. theyre much nicer now. the red has really come through and as superjalami30 said produce new leaves daily.

they do flower if you let the plant grow wild but should you let that happen you would have a tank of stems with all the leaves on the surface. if you cut off the surface leaves as soon as they get there the plant changes somehow to produce water leaves that will not keep growing upwards. kind of stunts itself.

available from greenline at about £4/5 for a potted bunch (about 10 stems) i bought them from there and split the bunch in 2 (see big sig tank, laft & right sides)

that pic was 1 month ago when first planted, i'll take a new pic tonight and update this post so you can see the finished product after settling down.

Edit: heres the tiger lotus now (1 month on)

and pearling

 

[jimbooo]

added new pics to above post...

 

[Jen]

I was really expecting them to be hard to keep. The guy at the fish store told me that they needed very high light levels - 4wpg+, and anything lower would make them get very tall, and not many leaves.

I decided to get 2 anyway, and am sooo happy. Mine are this deep rich red, with a few long skinny leaves from before I upped my lights. They are really starting to take off, and I bet I have a good 9 or 10 leaves on the bottom now.

I have 2.6wpg, and laterite on the bottom. I've got co2, but not as much as I should.

From what he told me, and he could be wrong for all I know, if you have lower lighting, the leaves will grow long and tall... almost near the surface like lilly pads.