Whoa! I Did Not Expect That....

[Evad]

So I have a case of that BGA bacteria thing and decided to do a 4-day blackout. The BGA is gone, which is nice, but what I didn't expect was all of my plants to literally double in size! Huh? Zero light and they grew like crazy! Can somebody explain to me what happened in plain english?

 

[aaronnorth]

cant help you there!

have they grown much quicker than when you run the tank normally?
did you turn CO2 off?
are you sure it was pitch black? no light seeping through!?

 

[three-fingers]

Etoliation?

 

[Million]

In low light, plants produce stress hormones which increase the internodal distance, so they're basically stretching in an effort to reach light - If I remember my A level biology correctly!

 

[aaronnorth]

there would still have to be some light for them to do this process though wouldnt there? otherwise without light, they would die, especially after 4 days,

 

[three-fingers]

I spelt 'etiolation' wrong .

I remember it from higher biology: [URL="http/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etiolation"]http/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etiolation[/URL].

Basically the same as what Million remembers I think.

there would still have to be some light for them to do this process though wouldnt there? otherwise without light, they would die, especially after 4 days,

Nope . Eventually they would die, but they do have stored energy.

 

[aaronnorth]

4 days is a long time though!

 

[SuperColey1]

Aaron. Think about weeds in a garden. When you dig and turn all the soil you may leave a wed in the soil 6 inches down. 2 weeks later and it is growing through. It's taken these 2 weeks to get 'back to the light'. During the 2 weeks it had none as it was under the soil.

In a blackout it is the same theory. No light so the plants use their energy to try and get to the light. They assume they are too far away from it. Much like if you have too little light over a tank the stem plants go leggy. This is just an extreme case.

AC

 

[aaronnorth]

thanks, how does it save energy? in the form of starch?