[APD] Comparable growth rates of different plants

[Jim Seidman <jimseidman at gmail_com>]

The common wisdom is that to stabilize a low-tech tank, it's good to
have lots of rapidly growing plants. Most people interpret this to
mean stem plants, and consider plants such as Crypts and Anubias at
the extreme other end of the growth spectrum.

My question is whether anyone knows of any research that has actually
compared the growth rates of different types of plants in comparable
conditions. By "growth rate" I mean something like dry weight per day
for a given starting size.

The problem is that growth rate isn't intuitively obvious to me. Sure,
Limnophila or Cabomba might grow an inch a day, but there's not much
mass in the leaves. Anubias may only put out a few leaves a month, but
they look much more substantial.

I certainly understand that for a starting tank stem plants have other
advantages such as being very cheap and quick to propagate, but I'm
trying to understand the point in a more general sense here as it
relates to nutrient uptake.

Thanks,
Jim
_______________________________________________
Aquatic-Plants mailing list
Aquatic-Plants at actwin_com
http://www.actwin.com/mailman/listinfo/aquatic-plants