Limnobium laevigatum (South American Frogbits) flower

[juggler]

After keeping them for so many years, first time I see flowers of Limnobium laevigatum.

These came from Frogbits kept in a pail in an air-con room ~22C , with a 11W light over them.

[juggler]

I pulled up some of the old Frogbits from the pail and found that the roots are very long. As long as 2ft.

[Nicky]

Did you grow them in urine?

[hsifsucsid]

u mean must keep in urine than can flower!!??

[RonWill]

Koah Fong, thanks for sharing the pics with us. I have Limnobium laevigatum in all my tanks and never expected them to bloom. What do you suppose was the trigger... the cool temp?

Another interesting thing I noted was the almost 2-feet long root structures, which is usually in high-nutrient environment, fed with organic fertilizer (chicken poo).

My frogbits' root rarely exceed 4 inches. Don't suppose you actually used urea for fertilizer, or did you??

Are there other fishes or shrimps in the pail?

[juggler]

Ronnie, I didn't expect to see flowers too. At first I thought they might be flowers from other plants. But I pull up one of the Frogbits and found that the flower was indeed attached to it. There has been several flowering subsequently.

The Frogbits are quite matured ones. Usually we throw them away so fast that we might not have chance to see them flower?

Anyway, I do not know exactly what triggered them to flower. But the situation is below:

1) I started with a pail of plants like Anubias and Java Moss which I intend to start a new tank. But got too busy so I just hook up a light source over it to keep it alive.
2) Perhaps the light was too strong, for green water appeared. And also contaminated by Bladderwort.
3) Then I added Frogbits to block the light.
4) Still busy. So added some Swordtails inside to provide the poo for the plants. I feed them once a while. Green water slowly disappeared.

Up till now no water change. Probably 3 or 4 months now.

I suspect the cool temperature of the air-con room and very low humidity in the air triggered it to bloom?

The roots were long as it was trying to reach for the Java Moss which it thinks is some kind of "substrate"?
Anyone tried Frogbits over a shallow tank with substrate? Not sure if the roots will grow into the substrate to extract nutrients?
For the Frogbits I pulled up, I notice that the roots were quite thick.

[fastlee84]

this is interesting news..i saw a previous post about this as well..thats why i'm only keeping the old ones and throw away the smaller sized ones. for me the roots did touched the gravel but as the flow rate is a bit strong the roots didn't grow into the gravel..i will update on this..will be interesting to see whether my frogbits can grow the flowers as my condition different from you..

[geoffrey]

We can use frogbit as our test kit.

Being a floating plant, it has aerial advantage. Hence, if it grows well while others inside the tank do not, you may want to take a look at CO2.

When their leaves are small or propagating slowly, and every other plants inside the tank are doing poorly, you may want to look at your NPK instead of fiddling your lights. Yellowing of old leaves and slower growth usually point to NO3.

A healthy frogbit has very long root structure, big leaves almost the size of a 50c coin and it multiples to cover a 2ft by 1ft area in less than a month.

If you have good lights, you see your frogbit with tiger-like strips. Under strong direct sun, you will see their leaves standing instead of floating on the water surface.

[RonWill]

[quote:7ce341cd83="juggler"]Anyone tried Frogbits over a shallow tank with substrate? Not sure if the roots will grow into the substrate to extract nutrients?[/quote:7ce341cd83]
Koah Fong,
When I quarantined some frogbits and gravel in a shallow container, the roots were resting over the gravel by at least 2 inches.

During the 3-week period, the roots made no attempt to 'dig in'. So either the roots are intended to be free-flowing or the gravel was not a suitable substrate (mud perhaps).

[quote:7ce341cd83="geoffrey"]We can use frogbit as our test kit.
When their leaves are small or propagating slowly, and every other plants inside the tank are doing poorly, you may want to look at your NPK instead of fiddling your lights. Yellowing of old leaves and slower growth usually point to NO3.[/quote:7ce341cd83]
Geoffrey,
Other than frogbits, Pistia stratiotes and Salvinia natans are also good indicators, but I was thinking if there's fishload, how could NO3 be deficient?

Recently, I saw alot of holes in my frogbits and suspect that Potassium is lacking. Threw in a pinch of K2SO4 which kinda fixed the problem.