Plant Behaviour

[bare bottom]

oh great ones,

I've noticed that my stem plants (Limnophila, echinodorus, ludwigia and hygrophila) towards the end of the lighting period, all the top leaves/fronds all bunch together and raise up as though reaching for the light.

Whats the cause for this? is it a natural phenomenon? or lacking in nutrients.

80 watts light with reflectors on a rio 125. N 20-30ppm, P 1-2ppm, K 1ppm added every other day. 5ml sera florena every other day ( to be changed to Flourish tomorrow). basically EI, with pressurised CO2 at 25-30ppm.

Any opinions would be great.

Ta.

 

[Themuleous]

My stems do that, think it might just be them closing up for the night, probably a defence mechanism so they don't look so inviting to hungary fish. But I could be wrong.

Sam

 

[bare bottom]

thought it might have been linked to that post about the light schedule 3-4-3, 4-2-4 etc and the plants using the lower light to build up a store of nutrients to use during the higher light time.

my lights come on 2 followed by the other 2 30mins later so as to not shock the fish. so overall i have 9 hrs of high light.

They are fine the next morning.

I thought about the wrapping up for bed thing but they do it an hour before lights out so still on high light.

stranger than friction!

 

[lljdma06]

thought it might have been linked to that post about the light schedule 3-4-3, 4-2-4 etc and the plants using the lower light to build up a store of nutrients to use during the higher light time.

my lights come on 2 followed by the other 2 30mins later so as to not shock the fish. so overall i have 9 hrs of high light.

They are fine the next morning.

I thought about the wrapping up for bed thing but they do it an hour before lights out so still on high light.

stranger than friction!

Well, plants are on a different schedule from us. Even though they are in a light light aquarium, they are still quite sensitive to their surrounds. If it is perceived that the surrounding area is getting dark (lights out in the room, setting sun, etc) they will display their closing up behavior well before the aquarium lights go out. They are still for the most part, governed by the outside environment. For example, my plants grow much faster in the Summer than in the Winter, but all of my tanks are near enough to windows that the plants can probably perceive the change in light duration and respond with growth. It is nothing to worry about.

llj

 

[JamesC]

It's the plants way of saying they've had enough light for the day. Mine start to do it around the eight hour mark which is now when the lights go off. I used to have them go off at nine hours.

James

 

[bare bottom]

great, so maybe i should have the lights on earlier and off earlier to make use of the natural cycle.

i'll try an hour and see what happens.

thanks guys.