Weak Egeria Densa?

[125gJoe]

I've bought some nice, wide, dark green, very healthy looking Egeria Densa about a month ago. Now it has smaller, skinny shoots growing out from the healthy, 'fat' stalk of the plant. They look weaker than the rest of the plant. What happened?

edit: ...maybe a pic would help explain....

 

[Rocketman]

I know EXACTLY what you are talking about! The same thing happens to me everytime I buy Egeria Densia, (or Anacharis.) I could never figure it out, but (as I assume the leaves are more spread out too now, right?) now I figure that maybe the stem of the plant is growing faster than it did it originally, causing the leaves to grow further apart. I've also noticed that the leaves point the opposite direction, (as in, down instead of up,) and the newer stalks are a lighter shade of green.

 

[Sumpin'fishy]

I believe it's a light intensity thing. Of coarse all nutrients/CO2/etc must be in proportion, but for some reason in higher light tanks (with more CO2/Nutrients) my plants stay more compact and grow longer leaves. The internode (between the leafy parts) are shorter in high light tanks also.

The Anachris I have in my low light tank with no nutrients added (and even with nutrients added - just more algae) the stalks grow much faster with longer internodes and shorter, paler leaves.

 

[Rocketman]

Yeah, I only have 30 Watts of light in a 60 Gallon Tank

 

[Lukara]

I have over 3 watts per gallon and have the same thing going on. I will say however that I purchased them recently and put them through a decontamination process which included a potassium permanganate dip as well as an alum dip. They didn't seem to like this after it was all done and the lower parts started to go bad, however, there was new growth on the tips, which I cut off to save and regrow. The new growth is the same as yours, they have very thin stems and those are even stemming out with new growth, some growing horizontally even. I'm not sure if I want to keep the stems if they will propagate this way because personally I think it isn't nice looking, but I'm giving it a chance to see if it will eventually become more robust.

 

[125gJoe]

Somebody may have mentioned this....

Could it be possible the 'suppliers' of Anacharis are over-fertilizing the plants giving it an extreme full look? I've seen Anacharis in the wild, and never seen it look as good as some LFS's. (wish the LFS's had more selections though - more than about 4 types of plants..)