Mangrove experiences

[Heres_doe_]

What's your experience with mangroves? I recently grabbed some while i was in Florida got about 5 pieces 2 with small roots. I currently have dragons breath macro so I'm not worried if it works or not being that it was free. I heard it's very slow. So can i just submerge the whole thing in the tank or does some of it have to be outside of water? If things do go well how good is nutrient export?

 

[ClearRain]

At least the top of the propogule should be above water. I've had great luck with them in brackish, but seem to be extremely slow in full salt. The one I have in salt has been growing roots for 6 months and just starting to produce leaf nodules. Be sure to give plenty of bright white/red light.

 

[Heres_doe_]

At least the top of the propogule should be above water. I've had great luck with them in brackish, but seem to be extremely slow in full salt. The one I have in salt has been growing roots for 6 months and just starting to produce leaf nodules. Be sure to give plenty of bright white/red light.

I got 3 pieces with leaf nodes on them so that's a bit of a head start and the ones without have roots. I do a few hours of whites and reds per day because i also have macro in there.

 

[Justin_Reef]

I have had the most luck growing propagules in fresh water (dechorionized tap) for the first year or until they are about 2' tall with several branches. I also use a fertilizer for freshwater planted tanks, and lots of it. I did not worry about them being above or underwater, some were tall enough to stay above, some under. It did not matter. I grew about 100 to 2' and then began to transfer to saltwater and found that if they were not planted in substrate, they grew incredibly slow vs. the planted ones. I used black plastic pots (check that the plastic is safe) with miracle mud, sand and crushed coral. I also found that if I acclimated them over several months from fresh water to full saltwater, they continued to grow but if I acclimated them in a matter or weeks, they often stopped growing or even died. I did not keep all 100 plants I originally grew but I still have about 7 and they are between 2 - 4' now after 3.5 years. The ones I kept in freshwater grow faster and with more branches and tighter leaf bunches but shorter (look more like a tree). The ones in saltwater grow sparse but taller and look more like young plants still.

Give them all the light you can. I found LED's never grew them well but it may be that the lights were just way too blue.

 

[Justin_Reef]

These were planted as propagules and this is 7 months.

This was about a year.

 

[Justin_Reef]

And posting the pictures reminds me that in the beginning, I planted in peat moss, soil and crushed coral. I then transferred to miracle mud, sand and crushed coral when some went into my aquarium, since putting potting soil and peat moss in an aquarium isn't the best idea.

 

[ClearRain]

Mine that are in brackish are under red/white led, aragonite sand, and fed with flourish and Epsom salt. They're growing like monsters. The one in my reef tank is under about 14,000k t5hos, wedged into a rock. Plants utilize very little blue light, so under blues they're going to grow very slow. Also, if acclimating between fresh and salt it needs to be done over a period of months.
Edit: the bulb I grow my potted ones under.

 

[bladeshadow]

So I bought ten propagules off amazon July 2019 to put in the sump of a 29 gallon brackish tank for which I was using to raise a baby diamond back terrapin we found almost dead on the beach when a bird dropped it. At the time the turtle was about the size of a silver dollar and i was using a small led grow light for the mangroves. I had them a small sterilite container in about 3 inches of fine sand inside the sump. I also had mollies to keep the turtle company. They bread like bunnies and every now and again squirtle the turtle would catch one.

About a year later the turtle was about 6 inches long and too big for the aquarium, so I transferred it all to a 125 gallon tank with a larger sump in the cabinet underneath. By this time the propagules had 4 - 6 leaves each and had grown very little. I kept them in the same little sterilite container with 3 inches of sand inside the new sump. I also slowly raised the specific gravity of the tank from 1.010 to 1.023 over a few weeks so that I could give have a full marine tank. I added some hermits, snails and marine fish to the new tank over time. The mollies continued to thrive at full marine salinity.

About a year ago the mangroves had outgrown the cabinet space under the aquarium (about 16 inches tall) but were still growing at a snails pace, so I did something crazy. I got a huge plastic pot and filled it with aragonite ( 2 feet deep of sand!) then plumbed it to the aquariums sump with a slow flow.. and put all that inside a grow tent with a more powerful led grow light, then replanted the mangroves completely into the pot discarding the old sterilite container. This is where things got interesting!

Within days the big pot filled with a think green algae coating with all the new lighting going on. I put some nerite snails, cerith snails and blue leg hermits in the pot and they quickly cleaned things up... and within a few weeks one of the mangrove trees just took off like a weed (I'll name this mangrove Boss for reference), several kept growing snails pace... and about half flat out rotted and died! Pretty sure the mangrove deaths can be attributed to the root damage that occurred transplanting them to the big pot. Under the sand was a huge network of super fine and fragile hair like roots that were near impossible not to tear up during transplanting.

About 2 months ago Boss did something amazing! He sprouted 3 prop roots! Within 2 weeks the sprouted prop roots made touchdown to the sand like a tripod! They grew out FAST! Now within just the last week four more prop roots have sprouted further up the trunk of boss! I'm having to trim boss now to keep him from outgrowing the tent, and he grows so fast that you can see it from one day to the next. Definitely doing a lot of nutrient exporting now. Better than chaeto at this point for sure. But it took YEARS and a big pot to get to that point. I've attached pictures I just took today. Notice how skinny the non-boss mangroves are?! Notice some of the new prop root sprouts on boss? I've always read you have to suspend the propagules to get prop roots, but not true. It took years, but all of the sudden I'm getting prop roots growing at lightning speed.

 

[bladeshadow]

Little update on my mangroves since it’s been around 3 months. I’ve trimmed it back twice since November and moved a few of my outdoor plants in with it to overwinter. For scale the tent is 6 feet tall. Interesting that only two of the new prop roots from November really took off. Also there are roots beginning to resurface from under the sand. The cerith snails I put in the pot have been successfully breeding and spreading into the main reef aquarium.