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Tiger Lotus
>Mine always do the bolt for the surface no matter how much I trim them
>back. They have also infested about 1/2 of my 90 gallon tank. I got them
>because I wanted a red plant with nice leaves like the pictures.
>
>The tank has no CO2 and 330 watts light in standard 90 gallon tank
>(48X18X24 tall). Is this to little light to get the none lily pad leaves?
>I really like the plant and it has spread like crazy, but it takes only a
>few days to recover most of the tank surface after a complete pruning of
>every single leaf.
The problem is if you let _any_ leaves get to the surface. Once the plant
"knows" that it _can_ reach the surface, it puts out predominantly floating
type leaves. The trick is to pinch _every_ floater _before_ it hits the
surface. This means that you'll have to check the tank every morning,
because under strong growth conditions, if a leaf is heading for the
surface, it will be there by the evening. If you keep this up initially,
the plant will "give up" and produce all or mostly submersed foliage at
least for a while. Then it may occasionally send up another floater to try
to reach the surface, but not so persisitently. You can re-train one that
is producing mostly floating leaves to remain submersed again, but it's
harder than starting from scratch.
Karen