cryptocoryne

[Jacob]

I’m getting some cryptocoryne retrospiralis plants soon, it may come in a plastic pot with some kind of planting medium. What should the substrate inside the pot I end up using contain?
I don’t know if there is something that has to be in the substrate for this plant since I’ve read that’s the case with other cryptocorynes, and if there are substrates to avoid in a blackwater tank.
Also wondering about blackworms, since this is really all I feed the sphaerichthys vaillanti I have. Maybe there’s a second food that would balance that one well, though they’ve grown well on mostly blackworms.

[Patrick Guhmann]

Hello Jacob,

I hope I understand you right: the plants arrive in plastic pots with planting medium and that you want to cultivate the plants in pots (plastic or clay pots?). Plants are often put in rock wool. The rock wool contents a lot of P and N and it looks very ugly. So you need another substrate. And please use clay pots.

I use special subtrate for plants (JBL Aquabasis) in two Aquariums to cultivate Echinodorus. This product is sandy clay with a little bit of peat. Above the substrate is a layer with gravel. The substrate does not effect hardness, pH or N and P content in the water and the plants grow well. I think the substances sand and clay 10:1 and a little bit of peat or leaves and perhaps some ashes of wood should be good for cryptocoryne too.

Blackworms are very good, but perhaps you can cultivate and feed Daphnia or Moina too.

Greetings
Patrick

[Peter Finke]

I am a lover of Parosphromenus and a lover of Cryptocoryne. But apart from some odd single plants I have up to now not succeeded in keeping and propagating both in one aquarium. It sounds ridiculous, but the answer is the substantial structural difference between the running waters with their constant new fertilization in nature and the very different rather stagnant waters in an aquarium, especially a Parosphromenus-tank, where you are forced to keep fertilizers rather far away.
I know of a chap (a Cryptocoryne-expert who claims to have a solution for both but I doubt it. It would be nice and near to the natural models but the solution seems to need unusal large efforts.
At any rate: carefully remove the substrate in which the plants have been grown!

[Mark Denaro]

Jacob,
This answer may be too late but you should remove the plants from the pot. I generally prefer to buy these as bare root rather than to pay the premium for the pot. The substrate should be fine and ideally include some iron. A simple way to accomplish this is to add a product like API’s Laterite to your substrate. The use of a substrate heater is also particularly beneficial to Crypts as it will create a flow of water through the substrate which will bring more nutrients to the roots.

You can offer a variety of foods to S. vaillanti. This species is the easiest to feed and breed in the genus. I have bred them on a diet consisting entirely of Ocean Nutrition’s Community Formula flakes. I would suggest a mix of flakes, pellets, frozen and live foods.
Best of luck,
Mark

[Jacob]

Thanks, the crpyts are repotted in peat and almond leaves, and are growing well. There isn’t that much peat covering their roots, they are probably exposed to the current enough to help them.
I never could get the vaillantis to eat frozen food, I will try flake though maybe they are so used to live it would be hard to get them to eat it now.

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