How to trim Echindorus tenellus?

[dc88]

The E tenellus in my tank have all the nutrients they ever wanted and now all became 3 inches tall weeds. How do people normally trim these thingy?
Cut away liked lawn mowing (quick and easy) or selectively pick and snip those taller leaves ? (take forever?)

[valice]

I pull up the entire stalk... It will start to overrun...

[|squee|]

Don't trim like grass; you can only do that for hairgrass. Yank up runners randomly across the lawn to thin the thickness out.

P.S. Long leaves mean you have low light.

[dc88]

Thanks. But is there a way to make them shorter ?
Find a bit too tall now for my tank size.
May be to reduce the fert ?

[Justikanz]

Trim the long leaves by plucking them off near the crown of the plant. Up the light wattage and wait. The new leaves should be smaller...

[Aquaspot World]

E.tenellus will grow big and fast if they get all the nutrients and lights. You actually need to starve it a little if you want it to stay small.

[Shiv]

try reducing nutrients & increasing lighting.

[dc88]

I decided to take the leap of faith by "lawn mowing" the overgrowth E.T. :

(1) Before trimming :

(2) Rigth after trimming (simply cutting away 2/3 of the grass height):

(3) After 2 weeks, new leaf grown back at a lower height :


So it proves that we can indeed "lawn-mowing" our aquatic lawn just liked our land-garden lawn.

[valice]

What happens to the lawned leaves?
Do they turn brown at the tip?

[PeterGwee]

They likely will die off since this is not the way to trim this plants. You need to thin them out by cutting the "runners".

Regards
Peter Gwee

[valice]

This is what I fear... The decaying plants will again create pockets of ammonia if the plant grows too dense after that...

[PeterGwee]

The ammonia leeched if any is too little to be of any worries. Just focus on the plant health and tank maintenance. If you want a lawn mowing style of maintenance, get hairgrass.

Regards
Peter Gwee

[dc88]

The trimmed leaf did not decay. They still hanging on while the new leaf grow out over it. Yes they will eventually shed liked normal leaf but not all at once.
Didn't seem to be a problem as I also do weekly 50% water change anyway.

This actually helps open up the congestion and allowing more light and water circulation to reach below.
I found more new healthy leafs forming.
Its just that you wouldn't do this sort of thing often, and the tank condition has to be in a pretty optimal stage.

I have tried the conventional way too (by pulling up the runners) and usually it caused more disturbance as the whole chain of runners and many more plants will be unrooted and replanting them will affect the rooting which took much longer to have the growth re-establish.

I am surprise to see the "lawn cutting" method actually give a faster rate (within 2 weeks) of growing back of new leafs.

Well, if every one just stick to the "conventional way" and not exploring we might still stuck at the old school thinking of P-limited regime.

[juggler]

I observed that as these runner plants grow more compact, they will start to grow tall to compete for light. It happens to my E.tenellus, S.subulata etc before.