Tropical Fish Forums

[fishy me]

I am starting a planted tank with elodea and hornwart as a background plant. I don't want to spend to much so I was wondering, since they are such fast growing plants, could you by one, that has grown a lot ( I saw one at a store that was more than a foot) then cut it into little ones that are 6" and plant them. Would that work?

[tetrabarb]

only stem plants can be distributed like that so if you know they are stem plants you may cut them

one website I read made it sound like hornwort was not a stem plant heres what they said:
"The tips will shorten and thicken in fall, before falling off and settling on the pond floor to spend the winter as buds. In spring, these buds grow to repopulate the pond. "

But I know that you can cut anacharis(elodea)!

hope I helped!
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[Sammie7]

You can cut the hornwort and its many side shoots and have them continue growing. That stuff grows like crazy. I remember when I had it. I used to look at in the morning and then look and it in the night to see how much it grew. It would grow at least an inch a day! Also this wasn't a high light tank it was my 5gallon hex with 10 watts fluorescent over it. It was kind of fun watching it grow at first, but then the pruning just became a nusiance. It was especially annoying that it didn't have any roots and you couldn't just bury the bottom part because it would just rot off.

[fzthomas]

I started with 1 elodea densa (anacharis) in one of my first aquariums and I've let it grow for a few weeks so the stems did reach the water surface and even grow along the water surface.
Then I've cut them all off and replanted the cutted stems in the gravel around the older ones... now about 6 months later I got a real jungle of elodea densa growing like nuts

Where you cut off the tops, the plant will develop 2 or more stems and so on and so on... but beware: you will have to trim them every week once they really settled. amazing how fast it grows.

When I took one of my older elodea's out, I noticed that it doesn't develop roots at the stem where I inserted it in the gravel. The roots develop just somewhere at the stem and find their way to the gravel bottom where they attach themselves. And that gives a real cool jungle look.

It's a nice, usefull and fastgrowing plant, but keep in mind that you will have to trim it now and than otherwise it will overcrow your aquarium.

[fishy me]

I think I will do what fzthomas did with the elodea. Sammie7, you say that when you shove one end in the gravel it rots off? Does that mean you can't do the elodea propagation thing? I might try one hornwart to see how I like it. Is it hard to get rid of (like duckweed)?

[Sammie7]

Hornwort's not hard to get rid of, but I remember that it was annoying when the little "needles" would fall off and cover the gravel or be floating around the surface. I'm pretty sure they don't regenerate from the needles, though I could be wrong. I had some anacharis but it never really did anything for me. My guess is that my high temperature water(82 and higher) is what killed it off. Also once I took it out and put it in a window sill it started to grow because it was a lot cooler over there. Most people I have read have success with burying it in the gravel, but with me that part just rotted away like it does with hornwort. Then again it didn't like my tank in the first place.