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Re: Banana plants &...



My experience with these plants is that a lot of them never establish in 
my tanks, but those that do are exteremley vigorous.  They do best for me 
with an enriched substrate, moderate to bright light.  My water is 
moderately hard and alkaline.

The plants that have 3-5 floating leaves routinely produce plantlets from 
the stem just below the point of insertion to the leaf.  Once these have 
developed a bit the mature leaf with the plantlet can be cut free of the 
parent plant and handled just as you would a vivaporous waterlily- pin or 
weight the leaf/platlet to a pot just below the water surface and lower 
slowly as it develops.  These offsets have higher survival rates than 
freshly purchased stock for me (adaptation?).  I too love the effect of 
seeing the underside of the pads at the water surface- definitely the 
best looking part of the plant, but don't expect much other than small 
crypts to survive the shade of those floating pads.  

Good cover plant for tanks that might otherwise be FO, although my 
puffers do occassionally bite through the stems (in their way?).

Robert