Tips on a vallisneria jungle

[FrozenFins]

Hey all,

I am rescaping my 50 Gallon angelfish tank and I want their to be a vallisneria jungle. I have kept live plants before/ in the present but never vallisneria, any tips?

[Lizzie Block]

Sweet! In my experience, getting val to take over is as simple as sticking it in there and giving it water and substrate. It's a total weed 😂. It'll spread with runner plants across your substrate until it has no room left. I would recommend giving it plenty of nutrients to achieve this, root tabs and liquid fertilizer, and enough light to balance ferts out so you don't get tons of algae. At least medium light would be ideal. One thing I would not recommend is using Easy Carbon or other products labeled as 'liquid Co2' regularly. It can kill val or otherwise damage growth over time. 

Awesome idea, I used to have a val jungle and I miss it. The fish really seem to love all the hiding spots too. Best of luck!!

[Seized]

Plenty of root tabs and water cloumn ferts along with good lighting to achive a good carpet. Dont use and liquid carbon products at all. They melt the vals horribly.

[pklong]

Greetings,

I have some runners going from the main plant with new growth.  Can you cut those runners and take the new growth and plant it elsewhere or does cutting the runner kill off the new growth?

Thanks!

[Garrett Dare]

I have val in two different setups and they both seem to do well with ferts and fertilized substrate. One of the tanks is a Walstad style tank with soil bottom and gravel top. The val in that tank are large, green, and healthy, but have no runners. (as I type this I realize that's probably because the gravel is too course and deep) The other tank is gravel with root tabs and the val have lots of runners, but dont seem as healthy and green. So yeah, ferts and root tabs!

[FrozenFins]

53 minutes ago, pklong said:

Greetings,

I have some runners going from the main plant with new growth.  Can you cut those runners and take the new growth and plant it elsewhere or does cutting the runner kill off the new growth?

Thanks!

I wouldn't do this with a runner, but you may be able to do it with another leaf, I am not sure as I dont have experiance with valisneria.

[gardenman]

Just be forewarned, despite growing like a weed it'll also melt away for no apparent reason.  I had a jungle of it in my 30 high a few years back. I was having to trim off about a foot of it a week. If I didn't it would completely block the light as it grew across the top of the tank. I found a big Madagascar Lace Plant at a local fish store for a really good price. Brought that home and added it to the tank and within a week all of the val was gone. There were probably fifty val plants and every single one melted away to nothing. The water sprite, water wisteria, floaters, Anubias, and Java fern were all fine, but the val just melted away. If you rely on val too much and it all melts, you can end up with a pretty empty tank.

[Mengo]

I bought some italian val 1-2months ago, and I put them is a 30%, 3% hydrogen peroxide dip for around 15min. A few days after putting them in my tank, all the leaves started to melt, i cut them off and till now they have barely grown back(I started putting root tabs a month ago). Anyone know why? Is it the dip or just bad vals from my lfs?

[kammaroon]

15 hours ago, pklong said:

I have some runners going from the main plant with new growth.  Can you cut those runners and take the new growth and plant it elsewhere or does cutting the runner kill off the new growth?

You can cut the runners and move the new plant to another location. If you have inert substrate, plug a root tab next to it.

[kammaroon]

13 hours ago, Mengo said:

I bought some italian val 1-2months ago, and I put them is a 30%, 3% hydrogen peroxide dip for around 15min. A few days after putting them in my tank, all the leaves started to melt, i cut them off and till now they have barely grown back(I started putting root tabs a month ago). Anyone know why? Is it the dip or just bad vals from my lfs?

Could be the dip. Someone else had similar problems after treating their tank:

 

[Mychala]

@MengoYep that was my Val above. Just hang in and it will start sending out shoots that grow. I've found if I cut it that it doesn't always continue to grow upwards. 

Edited January 23, 2021 by Mychala

[Daniel]

1 hour ago, Mychala said:

I've found if I cut it that it doesn't always continue to grow upwards. 

Yes. Some plants grow from a crown or a rhizome like crypts, but Vallisneria grows from the tip of its leaves. If you cut the tip of Vals leaves, that leaf will no longer be able to grow and might even die over time. Anything that damages the tip of Vallisneria leaves can have the same effect.

[Kelly S]

@Daniel interesting. Does that mean that it should only be planted in tanks that can accommodate its full height without trimming? 

[Daniel]

Not necessarily, depending on your tastes you might really like it when your Vallisneria does this:

I personally like that look. But if you don't like the look, you can trim your Vallisneria to look the way you want, just realize that you have ended the growth on that particular leaf.