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Utricularia campbelliana growing on a car cleaning sponge

A couple of years ago I wondered if a sponge could be used as a growing medium. Figuring that it was perhaps a little too 'sterile' I set about growing some moss on it. My U campbelliana had been multiplying well in a more traditional growing medium, which unfortunately started to succumb to a fungal attack, so I decided to remove it and transplant pieces into different growing mediums in the hope that at least one would survive. One of those mediums was the car cleaning sponge and much to my surprise this piece is performing best out of all the transplants:

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In the pics below you can see a little bit of the sponge. It has a net covering it, which I believe is designed to help remove bugs when used to clean a car.

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Far out! Does the sponge just sit in a shallow tray of water to keep wet or...?
 
The whole sponge sits in a preserve jar, with about 10-15mm of water at the base. The lid of the jar has the seal removed and there is a small fan that sits behind the sponge to aid air circulation and hopefully stop another fungal attack.
 
I've often thought about trying this but never got around to it, please keep us updated on this.

I've also recently re-setup my U. graminifolia grow-up tank and I'm getting some good initial growth around the aquarium filter pad (kind of sponge like) I'm using to keep the medium away from the "sump pump" area.
 
Can you do a pic of the whole setup from a distance?
 
Nice! I have almost the exact same setup with a few utics, although I'm using hygrolon/epiweb instead of a sponge. It's pretty much the same idea though, and your's is much cheaper :lol: Good going!
 
The setup is really simple. The lighting is provided by a compact fluorescent (CFL), which sits in front of the jar. It didn't really grow that well until I change the CFL from a daylight to a warm white. You can see from the first picture that there are two colonies, and the one at the bottom is doing much better - which I suspect might be attributable to moister conditions. I water it by filling the jar with RO water approximately once a week, which I then empty out, leaving a little run-off at the bottom.

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Nice thanks for the setup pics!

Strange to hear that warm white grows the plants better than daylight color, interesting!
 
Strange to hear that warm white grows the plants better than daylight color, interesting!
I'm starting to notice similar with LEDs too - maybe due to the higher levels of red spectrum - though I have never performed any controlled experiments, so can't qualify my observations.
 
  • #11
I've also recently re-setup my U. graminifolia grow-up tank and I'm getting some good initial growth around the aquarium filter pad (kind of sponge like) I'm using to keep the medium away from the "sump pump" area.
I have a picture sent to me somewhere with a filter sponge covered in U. graminifolia.
 
  • #12
Mobile,
Kudos on your creativity! :hail: I doubt that I would ever have come up with a setup like this - I really like how you regularly push the boundaries with growing (Cephs, Utrics, Heli's, etc).

I would have thought that this was far too wet but the results say something different. I've been keeping my original mother plant (on a moss-covered cork slab) drier than last year & it looks like I'm losing some of the 'expansion-outposts' it had established. I need to turn this trend around - the other plants that have been kept wetter are doing much better - including the jamesoniana (where the bottom 0.5-1 cm is often submerged).
 
  • #13
I have two distinct colonies of U. campbelliana on the sponge, one at the bottom, which is in the first pictures, and one higher up. The one at the bottom is much wetter and the plant grows much better there. Indeed it has put out a new leaf right on the waterline.

My personal opinion, and I'm sure many will disagree, is that perhaps we try to emulate the natural conditions too much without taking all variables into consideration. We know the 'typical' humidity and temperatues on the Tepui and can emulate them, but they are just a small part of the vast number of variables that environment will be subjected to. This brings into question whether the variables that we can control are influenced by other variables in the natural environment that we don't control in cultivation, i.e. can one without the other actually be detrimental or of little benefit?
 
  • #14
She's started to explore around the side of the sponge now...

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and she's putting out lots of leaves...

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  • #15
Any updates on this?? Looks very very interesting
 
  • #16
It is spreading quite fast, putting out runners to explore new places:

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One of the leaves has developed under water:

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