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Re: Aquatic Plants Digest V3 #181






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> > From: Dan Q <dqallwet at avana_net>
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> > Interestingly,
> > incandescent does work (be it wasteful in the long run). I have a 10
> > gal. I play with in my office that has only a 65W incandescent bulb
> > for lighting. There is an assortment of plants one of which is
> > Riccia. I have Riccia in 8 tanks (and vats) which are lit by
> > fluorescent. At best, the Riccia gets about 2" deep under the
> > fluorescent. Under the incandescent, The Riccia is much thicker with
> > the incandescent. Directly under the bulb it's 4 1/2 " deep.
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> Very interesting.  Do you think it's due more to the concentrating of
> the light in one small area, or to the spectrum of the light itself?
> 65 watts over a subsection of a 10-gallon tank might be comparable to having
> 32 watts or more over the entire tank...
>

  I'm not sure. I didn't use the light to see what effects it would have on Riccia. I put the Riccia in there to experiment on a way to
keep it attached longer to the bottom than the typical 30- 50 days I believe were generally reported here in the APD . My idea was to
sandwich Java Moss between thin layers of Riccia.  My thinking was that Riccia can't hold on to anything, but maybe enough Java Moss can
attach to the Riccia so the whole clump can be dragged to the bottom.
  The first step was to get the two to bind together floating at the surface. Keeping the Java Moss between the 2 layers of Riccia takes
some daily maintenance as the Java Moss is heavier and has a tendency flip to the bottom of the heap.  After several weeks of this I
could grasp the Java Moss and pull it and the Riccia out of the water in one nice clump. At that point I pulled the clump to the bottom
and placed a small lava stone on a corner of the Java Moss to hold it down. This clump has now stayed together for several months and
grown considerably with no signs of breaking apart.
  I started a second clump in the same 10 gal., but realized I had no place to put it, so I sort of forgot about it and left it floating.
The 2 have been growing together (without any of my help) into this very tight mat for several months. When I measured the thickness for
my response above I decided it had grown to large and was blocking out too much light. So I decided to move some.
  I discovered several things. First, although the clump was 4 1/2" thick, the bottom 1'- 1 1/2" was all  Java Moss. It was so dark on
the underside of this clump when I measured that I didn't notice this. Secondly, the clump I removed was roughly 10" square. It was so
dense, I could remove the whole clump with little hand support underneath. It was almost as tight as a mat of Liliopsis.
  The clump I removed now resides (floating) in a 20 gal tank with a fluorescent hood, so I will soon see  if it stays as nice as it is
now with the different lighting.
Dan Quackenbush
All Aquatic Plants
http://www.malloftheworld.com/aquarium