Requesting Plant ID

[neitherman]

Does anyone know what this plant is? It was labeled as Lobelia Cardinalis but based on some Googling this seems wrong. It arrived with bright purple and green leaves but unsure if the purple color will return as those leaves are all melting off and being replaced with bright green ones:

The photo from Amazon looked like this:

It looked like this when it arrived but acclimating seems to have made it lose the color.

[Odd Duck]

Unless you have very bright, intense lights, Lobelia cardinalis ends up light to medium green when grown submerged.  The ID looks appropriate.  Sellers never tell you they will almost always lose all the purple and have a moderate leaf form change.

[neitherman]

Thank you! I have the ACO lights running at 80% so it's probably bright enough and if not I can crank up the brightness a bit more.

[Odd Duck]

By the time you get bright enough to get purple in submerse brown cardinal plant you are highly likely to develop algae issues unless you’re doing large, very frequent water changes (might even need daily water changes).  If your lights were bright enough your new leaves would be purple, not converting to green.

Edited June 2, 2023 by Odd Duck
Typo

[neitherman]

On 6/1/2023 at 5:04 PM, Odd Duck said:

By the time you get bright enough to get purple in submerse brown cardinal plant you are highly likely to develop algae issues unless you’re doing large, very frequent water changes (might even need daily water changes).  If your lights were bright enough your new leaves would be purple, not converting to green.

Got it. I'll work on a solution to get it more light without increasing the photo period for the entire tank in that case. I guess it will just have green leaves for now. As long as it doesn't die I'm cool with that.

[Odd Duck]

On 6/4/2023 at 12:38 PM, neitherman said:

Got it. I'll work on a solution to get it more light without increasing the photo period for the entire tank in that case. I guess it will just have green leaves for now. As long as it doesn't die I'm cool with that.

Yes, it’s still a pretty plant, just doesn’t have the purple in most people’s tanks.  You might be able to get it purple growing it emerse under bright light.  It tends to tolerate extremely wet roots and reasonably drought resistant too.  It also tolerates fairly deep shade on the north side of my house under moderately dense bushes - it’s a native wildflower in my area and I was very excited to see it grown as an aquatic so I tried it as soon as I saw it available.  I was very disappointed when it didn’t do well under my moderate lights.  😢