What's new
TerraForums Venus Flytrap, Nepenthes, Drosera and more talk

Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

aquatic plant to terrarium plant conversions

I am sure some of you have seen the "tropica" style aquatic plants sold in the clear tubes with the water gel crystals. These are aquarium plants growing in very humid mini terrarium conditions and I have been hardening mine off for use in vivariums where they are growing out of water but with good humidity and plenty of soil moisture. This is all coming along good so far (generally a lot of these plants aren't always "true" aquatics anyway) but I have been curious about trying to harden off other more exotic aquatics/marginals into an emersed lifestyle if hardened off slowly and carefully.

I have a bunch of those tropica tubes and other similar containers and I have water crystals up the wazzu for my roaches so I was curious, before I go out and buy some plants, if anyone has done this type of conversion before I would love to read your experiences.

Thanks! :)
 
i've never used the water gel crystals before, but have transitioned growing from aquatic to emmersed. basically place plants in the tank, water all the way up to barely cover the plant completely. then just let the water evaporate. use serran wrap to cover most of the top of the tank and maintain humidity. by the time the water evaporates completely, your plants would have transitioned to their emmersed forms. java ferns and anubias are difficult to transition because of their high humid demands.

there are some hardcore crypto fanatics out there with impressive emmersive setups. although, i still dont get the fascination with collecting all the different species. they all look the same to me.
 
I've tried it with a number of plants in my aquarium by hanging long shoots over the edge of the glass and see what survived, so far hydrocotyle, hottonia and myriophyllum adapt really fast.
Microsorum pteropus doesn't do well for me on old leaves, they slowly dry up and turn black, but if i allow the small plantlets on the tips of the leaves to emerge out of the water on their own they seem to adapt well.
 
I've grown a few (many) aquatic plants emersed, I have some Java fern growing emersed right now in 60-80% humidity. All I did was place a small piece on some moist driftwood/LFG and forgot about it. Well it has been VERY slowly growing every since. I took some Anubias nana 'Petite' and just planted it in some wet LFS and it took fine, the other mediums I attempted this in did not work so well. Once I got an emersed batch going it was easy to get it to take in the other mediums.

The bunch plants are really easy, just set them up in about 6" of water and let them grow out of the water, cut the emersed growth and plant them in your vivarium of choice.

You would be surprised at what you can "make" crypto's do, I have some C. parva growing emersed with my living rooms humidity, what 30%? I can't kill off some C. wendtii in a vivarium I planted a few years back. I have forcefully pulled out every corm/leaf I can find of it and 2-3 months later there it is again.

Almost all of those "tube" plants would die in a few months submerged :)

Other odd things I've done...I've made a humidity tent out of plastic wrap and a tooth pick...misted plants with a reducing frequency until they adapted...just planted them and ran :eek:

By far the easiest way is to just let the water evaporate and have the air the same humidy as the plants will go into.
 
Back
Top