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A little experiment



Maybe this will distract everyone from "the LaMotte fight".  

Back in spring of this year, I decided to do and experiment with an 
Ozelot sword.  I expected this experiment  to be an unmitigated failure. 
 The ozelot was huge and occupying the entire end of my 30 gallon long. 
 It was blooming a couple of times a month, and I had tons of plantlets. 
 So I went to home depot and bought a big pot and some aquatic soil.  I 
dumped in the soil and planted this Big ozelot, then filled the pot with 
water.  Soil soup was the result, so I drained it and added  some gravel 
as a top layer.  This solved that problem. The north facing placement 
 resulted in the water temp only being about 100 degrees F buy the end 
of the day.  So I added an aquaclear power head with filter attachment 
to the setup.   With the aerator on full, the temp stayed about 95.

This plant had leaves that were up to about twelve inches long, and 
several inches wide.  The stem of each leaf was very short.  All of 
these leaves slowly turned brown and decayed after it was placed 
outside.  At first I thought it was the 50 degree F nights, and added a 
heater.  The leaves continued to die.  That when I added the power head 
thinking it was too hot in the day.   But all the leaves died, they were 
replaced by similar shaped leaves about an inch in length.  The water it 
self was murky and occasional water changes helped.  The filter seemed 
to have no effect on the murkiness, and for the most part you couldn't 
see the plant.  Over time it produced many of the smaller leaves.  Then 
one day I went out to check on it and the water was crystal clear.  It 
had tons of little leaves, plus it had produced a quite unexpected new 
leaf type.  This leaf is an ellipse, about 4 inches long and and inch 
wide.  This new leaf has a long slender stem and the leaf floats at the 
surface like the surface leaves of an Aponogeton Species.

I guess it finally got strong enough to strip all the nutrients from the 
water column, but what I'm wondering is if it would be possible to get 
the plant to grow like this in an aquarium.  It's really a much prettier 
plant now than it ever was. I'm in north Georgia, where winters have 
been getting milder every year.  I might just put a heater out there and 
see if it can over winter.