Madagascar Lace Plant
By Patrick Miller
Issue 43 Oct-Dec 2008
I have always wondered why you never see Aponogeton madagascariensis, Madagascar lace plant, in those cool looking high tech planted tank displays. These plants are the Queens of the planted aquarium and just about everyone wants one. I know that I always wanted them before I purchased one. So why don’t you see them in very many planted show tanks?
Now these plants have a reputation of being a hard plant to grow and a plant that lasts only a year or so in a tank before it dies. If you read up on these plants you will find that;
The bulb rots easily,
They need calm water,
They have fragile leaves,
They need very high light,
They need high water temperatures
They are annual plants or
They need a resting phase out of water.
But none of items I listed above are the reason that you do
not usually find these plants in high tech
planted tank displays, they are also all false. The reason I believe that you
do not find these in most
planted tank displays is they grow to be huge plants if a few easy to meet
conditions are provided.
These are plants that can fill a 30 gallon aquarium and then some. I planted
one in a 90 gallon tank
and after 3 months it has about a dozen leaves of which 6 are over 20” long and
the longest one is 30”
and more are growing. I am sure that in another 3-4 months this plant will have
taken over fully one half
of this tank.
I don’t do anything special for these plants, of which I
now have two. One which fills up a 29 gallon
tank and the other in the above mentioned 90 gallon tank. Creating a high tech
planted display tank
with a healthy Madagascar lace plant it would have to be one big tank. A tank
of 300+ gallons with
good depth and height as a plant this big will spread out and grow tall dwarfing
other plants.
Most planted show tanks are not nearly this big and to create a living work of
art like the ones Takashi
Amano creates this plant grows far too large.
So what are the requirements that I believe you need to grow a beautiful and healthy Madagascar lace plant?
1. I believe this plant needs a nutrient rich substrate. My tanks all have a layer of dirt with a layer of washed sand over the dirt. Ideally you will want to keep the bulb at the top of the substrate. If the bulb that you purchased has roots don’t trim them. Instead use these to hold the plant into the substrate. If the bulb that you purchase does not have roots you can bury the bulb part way into the substrate and after you have several new leaves you can gently pull the bulb so that it sits at the top of the substrate, the roots should hold the plant down. The bulbs don’t rot that easily and if you keep it partially buried in the substrate I believe that you will not have problems as long as the other conditions are meet.
2.
This is a plant that naturally comes from rivers and streams. If you put this
plant in stagnant water it will not grow as well as it will if it is put into a
tank that has a moderate level of current in the water. While this plant seems
to have fragile leaves these leaves are ideally created to have water running
not only over the leaves but through them. On my smaller tank I have a Penguin
150B Bio-Wheel Power Filter with the base of the plant just below the outflow of
the filter. On the 90 gallon I have a 304 Fluval canister filter with a
homemade spray bar. The spray bar is on the left side of the tank with the base
of the plant just under it.
3. If this plant is given too much light it will grow algae on its leaves. The leaves on the Madagascar lace plant
4. This plant is from the island of Madagascar. For me it
brings images of a tropical paradise similar to the
Amazon in temperature but that is not entirely true. The capital of Madagascar
is Antananarivo which sits at
an altitude of 1276 meters above see level and is pretty close to the center of
the island. Christel Kasselmann,
in her book Aquarium Plants, states that this plant can be found at
an altitude of up to 1800 meters. Since
Antananarivo is about 500 meters below this maximum altitude we can use it to
get an estimate of temperatures
that this plant is acclimated to. The temperatures in the chart below are
average air temperatures, water
temperatures tend to fall in-between the high and low temperature and do not
fluctuate as much on a daily
bases as air temperatures.
|
DATE |
JAN |
FEB |
MAR |
APR |
MAY |
JUN |
JULY |
AUG |
SEP |
OCT |
NOV |
DEC |
|
HIGH |
80 |
79 |
78 |
75 |
71 |
69 |
70 |
73 |
77 |
79 |
80 |
80 |
|
LOW |
62 |
61 |
60 |
55 |
51 |
49 |
49 |
50 |
54 |
58 |
60 |
62 |
Temperatures listed are the average from the 22 of each month as reported on wunderground.com
Large parts of Madagascar do have slight seasonal temperature changes and this plant welcomes some seasonal temperature fluctuation. Notice also that the high temperature reported in the chart above does not reach above 80 degrees for average highs. However, the closer to the coast and the closer to sea level one travels the more tropical the temperatures become. I believe people keep the temperature consistently too high for this plant. The plant seems to do much better with seasonal changes. In my tanks the high temperatures are in the low 70’s and the low temperatures are in the low to mid 60’s. As the writing of this article the plant that I have had for two years is just starting to put up new leaves. Your temperature does not need to be as low as mine but varying the temperature of the tank will help give the plant the resting phase that it seems to need.
5. And that is the real trick in growing the Madagascar lace plant; understanding that there is a definite growth phase where the plant puts up new leaves and a rest phase which the plant uses to store energy to the bulb. I have read that the growth phase takes place in the cooler months and the resting phase takes place in the warmer months. I am not sure if this is true. My original plant does seem to follow this however my most recent purchase has grown all summer long. Don’t be in a rush to remove those old leaves so that the plant puts up new leaves. Give this plant 2-4 months of rest without putting up new leaves and when it is ready it will start putting out new leaves which will be your signal to start removing the old leaves. At the end of the plants rest period I like to let a few new leaves start to grow and then I remove almost all of the old leaves removing the remaining old leaves after 2-3 new leaves are at about 12” long. The old leaves will break off easily from the bulb letting you know that they are no longer needed.
If this plant is given a good substrate, water movement over its leaves, not too much light and a resting period it has the opportunity to really become an impressive plant.
As you can see this plant does not need very many special requirements to grow well. I would recommend that anyone with a large tank or a sense of adventure give this plant a try and you may just be stunned at what a beautiful plant this can becom
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