Cabomba

[9tails]

Hi, I've got a well planted tank with plenty of different species of plants in there. My problem is the cabomba. I buy it nice and bushy and it grows really quickly, but the bottom of it becomes bald and some of it is yellowing. The tops are nice and bushy, with green growth and some have flowers. Also, it breaks and is left floating about occasionally or becomes uprooted easily. There are roots coming out of the sides but no roots on the bottom which is planted in the gravel.

Can anyone tell me how to keep this plant looking its best? It is so long that a third of it is floating at the top of the tank.

 

[Bigguppy]

I love this plant. It is a great space-filler, looks lovely and grows extremely fast. I usually have to trim them weekly. When the plant grows to the top of the aquarium, just cut it at the midsection and replant. They produce very small, weak roots however and are easily uprooted by inquisitive fish. I have sand as the top layer in my substrate so I had to pile some gravel around these to keep the cory's from uprooting them. Planting these is not necessary. They can be tied to driftwood or rocks. I've found if you keep them in dense enough clumps it doesnt't even matter if some of them get uprooted as the ones around the uprooted one keep it from floating to the surface. As a final note, the only way I got these plants to thrive was to use CO2 injection. Otherwise they just fell apart. I used the do-it-yourself CO2 method of yeast fermentation.

 

[Starry]

Your should be pruning them as soon as they grow to the top of the water. The way to do this is to uproot the whole stem, cut off a few inches from the bottom, and replant the tops. When you replant, snip the leaves off the bottom 2 or 3 nodes, because new roots will start growing out of these nodes. All plants will start yellowing and withering away at the bottom unless they're pruned regularly. Cabomba is especially susceptible because it needs lots of light, which the bottoms don't get because they're shaded.

 

[9tails]

Thank you both for your replies. I got the scissors out and have cut all my cabomba in half, stripped off the bottom few leaves, attached planting weights to groups of 6 stems and replanted. Lovely, nice and tidy and such a money saver!