Trimming water sprite?

[gogomarigo]

How do you trim water sprite when it gets too tall?

I read that if you just trim the top, the rest of the plant will die back cause it grows like a fern.

I know that you propagate by cutting away the baby plants but I can’t find info on what to do when I just want to manage the height of the plants.

Also, to promote aerial growth, would I just leave the tips of the top most leaves out of water, like draped over some floating airline tubing...?

[Daniel]

Water sprite is a fern, but you can trim off whatever you would like, the rest of the plant will not die back.

To promote aerial growth, just let it float. Any new leaves will unfurl up into the air with no need to drape over anything. Here is one my floating ones (growing in a patch of duckweed 🙂). This is the narrow leaf variety, there is also a broad leaf variety.

 

[gogomarigo]

2 minutes ago, Daniel said:

Water sprite is a fern, but you can trim off whatever you would like, the rest of the plant will not die back.

To promote aerial growth, just let it float. Any new leaves will unfurl up into the air with no need to drape over anything. Here is one my floating ones (growing in a patch of duckweed 🙂). This is the narrow leaf variety, there is also a broad leaf variety.

 

Beautiful!!

[Maggie]

Water sprite is my favorite because it loves my water and grows very fast! 

[gardenman]

I find water sprite nearly impossible to kill in tanks where it grows well. I have four planted tanks and in two of them (50 gal and 20 high) it thrives and in two it barely survives. In the tanks where it thrives it nearly chokes out everything else and grows like mad. I just pinched off about a foot of growth in my twenty high and it'll be back in a matter of days.

I find that plants in the same water (as much as I can test it anyway) similar lighting (6500 K LED of comparable intensity) and identical fish (mostly neon swordtails and Super Red Bristlenose plecos) and the same substrate (Flourite) behave vastly different. Water sprite grows like a weed in two of them and fades badly in the other two. I just got some red root floaters a few weeks ago and they're carpeting the surface of my 50 gallon tank, I just tossed a bowl of them yesterday, they're doing okay in my 20 high, and dying in my 30 high and 10 gal quarantine tank. I put two small bowls of them in water under my plant lights I use for seed starting in the winter and one bowl is thriving while the other one died. Java fern and Anubias grows everywhere for me. Java moss grows best in the 10 gal quarantine tank. Duckweed does best in the 50 and 20 high. All of my water comes from my well and every tank tests as nearly identically as possible, yet some plants thrive in one tank and disappear in another. Growing aquatic plants is very hit and miss. When you get a plant that grows well for you you'll wonder why others have issues. Then you'll find an "easy to grow" plant that you can't keep alive. I try to buy multiples of any new plant and spread some to each of the four tanks. Something will thrive in one tank, survive in another and disappear in another. 

[SpiritLiefe]

The only thing I can think of is that if all the conditions are generally similar but some plants thrive in some and die in others there must be another variable involved. Natural sunlight, spacing between plants, aeration in the particular tank, or do the other plants in the tank utilize the same resources? There is probably a reason I just don't know what it could be but maybe get a list going of differences in your tanks and try to narrow it down? Good luck. Wish I could offer more advice.