Mangrove alternatives

[vinvinaa]

Any suggestion for mangrove alternatives? My wife would like to add some green into the tank like below, however my tank is too deep (40cm) and my sand is too swallow to grow a mangrove here. Also, it is difficult to buy mangrove in HK LFS. Any alternatives? I think of some macroalgae, but I have my old yellow tang waiting to eat them all up.

 

[shootingstar_reef]

Seagrass? not sure how feasible that is. You could also try and add some rocks to hold air plants? some people have done that.

 

[OrionN]

If you want alternative to Red Mangrove, then Black mangrove is the plant to growth in your aquarium. It is smaller, more compact and IME very fast growing.
Just over 2 years from seed and my plant is about 2'X2'X2'
see my posts here:
The Ultimate Mangrove thread page #13

 

[ReefGuard Systems]

Love the drawing

 

[OrionN]

Other than mangroves I don’t think you will find many plants that grow out of the water that can take full salt water. I maybe wrong but I don’t thinks so.

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Personally, I'd go with some calcified macroalgae, as - to my understanding - most herbivorous fish find these unpalatable and will leave them alone (things like mermaid's fan algae, shaving brush algae, pinecone algae, certain Caulerpa spp., Halimeda spp. etc.). Alternatively, if you do want to use mangroves, you can fill a little container with sand/mud and use it as a pot/planter for the mangrove in the tank - that way you wouldn't need a deeper sand bed in the tank, as the tree would have its own deep sand bed.

That said, there are likely a few other plants that could grow out of the water in marine conditions (these plants are known as hydro halophytes or aqua-halines), but, to my knowledge, the tropical water ones of these are typically more estuarine/intertidal species (so you may need the water level to rise and fall daily to prevent killing the plant, and you may lower salinities for many of them). If you were running a coldwater tank, you may have some better options, but I haven't looked too deeply into this yet. Either way, with real plants you'd need deeper sand/mud for their roots, which means either a deep sand bed or a planter like I described above.

 

[Tcook]

If you want alternative to Red Mangrove, then Black mangrove is the plant to growth in your aquarium. It is smaller, more compact and IME very fast growing.
Just over 2 years from seed and my plant is about 2'X2'X2'
see my posts here:
The Ultimate Mangrove thread page #13

Where did you get that seed? That growth is amazing. Love the flowers. These types of things make reefing very interesting.

 

[OrionN]

I got the seeds on the beach. Both on the Gulf of Mexico beach and in the Bay of Corpus Christi beach.
Corpus is just right at the northernmost of the Black Mangrove range. I should say the US gulf coast. Friends in the Houston area also get seeds and have in the wild plants there too.

 

[Tcook]

I got the seeds on the beach. Both on the Gulf of Mexico beach and in the Bay of Corpus Christi beach.
Corpus is just right at the northernmost of the Black Mangrove range. I should say the US gulf coast. Friends in the Houston area also get seeds and have in the wild plants there too.

I found some seedlings. Yours are obviously doing very well. Do you have the roots completely submerged? The site mentioned keeping black mangrove roots partially above water.

 

[OrionN]

Black Mangrove under bright light have a very compact grow habit that can be easily prune and direct.
One draw back for Black Mangrove is it excrete salt crystals on the leave. This result in a dusty fine coloration on the leave. This can easily wash off with a spray bottle if it bothers you. Red mangrove does not do this.

 

[OrionN]

I found some seedlings. Yours are obviously doing very well. Do you have the roots completely submerged? The site mentioned keeping black mangrove roots partially above water.

I started my plant completely in the water. It grew out of the water and takes off. It will send air roots up to above the water to “breath”
You can see these roots as pointed growth without leave projecting to about 1-1.5 inches above the waterline.