WOW!

Many thanks!

A single floating leaf is not enough energy gain to build a flower. It takes multiple floaters for me, and strong light. I used 40watts per square foot of NO - 40-long tank, four-tube fixture ar 40W/each. So-so reflectors, first surface, but poor shape.

Mine was pretty much as above (great rainbow fry early food - they are close to the surface critters and so are the vinegar eels - the right food in the right place). I pushed fairly coarse open-cell foam cylinders into the bottle neck with part in the culture solution. Pull out the sponge and rinse...

Yes, it needs surface foliage to flower. They are full sun plants. We bonsai them by removing the floating foliage to keep the light hogs from shading out everything else in the tank. If you want the flowers (make sure the buds don't get fried in the lights), let them float.

But water lily and banana plant stems are not really stems - they are petioles. The only potential or real growth points are at the two axils, at the tuber/rhixome/bulb, and at the petiole-blade junction. The latter is the point of origin of the adventitious plantletss that we see. The lower axil co...

Not the leaf stem, but the banana plants and certain day-blooming tropical day-blooming water lilies do produce adventitious plants from a potential bud atthe leaf-stem node or axil. Not from the stem, only at that joint. I can't remember which of the Nile "Lotuses" (They are not of course...

Nematodes are ubiquitous. Most are soil dwellers, free-living, non-parasitic creatures. Some are parasitic or injurious to certain plants or animals, but as in most large classes of organisms, most are harmless to useful. I add "beneficial" nematodes to bearded Iris beds every few years, a...

I'd second Ghazanfar's comments on the low 02 driving the nematodes into the water column. They are not very demanding -being largely substrare critters - but do need some o2. The Cory cats are able to use atmospheric air for O2 - when they run ti the surface, they take a gulp of air and their gut e...

You mean that experienced hobbyists are supposed to be immune from stupid mistakes?

Is that humanly possible? If I was supposed to learn that somewhere along the line, I missed out...

Kris - I like your shot, thanks! I never think to ask if anyone else's flowers pearl, but never think of when I am around the members It is one of the few things in my tank which actually show pearling (unless I turn my internals off). It think it is largely because they do not release the bubbles e...