The ultimate Mangrove thread!!

[pgravis]

I have had good luck with both Amazon and eBay sellers. If you can specify only ones grown in SW, the last batch I received was around 24” with multiple leaves and they have done great.

 

[thepotoo]

I'm gonna repost this link because it's basically everything you need to know about keeping mangroves.

https://www.twolittlefishies.com/images/mangrove_manual.pdf

 

[Ichtha_yo Stuff]

Great new video on Mangroves from WWC, at the Godfather’s house where he discusses taking care of Mangroves and highlights his outdoor lagoon.

 

[Eric R.]

Great new video on Mangroves from WWC, at the Godfather’s house where he discusses taking care of Mangroves and highlights his outdoor lagoon.

Great video, really enjoyed getting an update on the outdoor SW pond, such an awesome idea, and the mangrove looks incredible! Really cool to see the Zoas on the aerial roots, and what a bunch of gorgeous clams to top it off. My dream setup.

 

[N.Sreefer]

Has anyone on here tried cultivating halophytes other than mangroves? Around 2 percent of the plants on earth are halophytes so there's lots of other plants us reefers could try.

 

[Eric R.]

I have not seen anyone transition mangroves from fresh to salt successfully. I have not tried it myself. In the Book of Coral Propagation, Anthony Calfo says not to transition them (either direction), but I would guess that if you did it slowly enough (over weeks at least, probably months), it would be OK. And higher in this thread someone claims to have transitioned them, so Calfo's book may be showing its age.

Still, easier to just start them in salt to begin with, I would think.

Julian has a ton of mangroves growing in his yard. I sorta assumed he started many of his in FW, then acclimated them to SW? I think Giga had his growing outside in FW as well, before he moved them to his SW tanks. However, it does seem to be something that many people struggle with, so it would be nice to have a definitive answer on how to acclimate FW grown mangroves to full salinity SW. Julian actually mentions being able to transition mangroves from FW to SW in his mangrove manual (pg 6):

"Mangroves can suffer "shock" when they are moved. This is manifest by wilting leaves or loss of leaves. When the leaves wilt or drop off in a moved plant, I place it in tap water and give it strong illumination. Usually the tree recovers within a few days. If the leaves have all dropped off, the top bud will usually open within 10 days if the tree is placed in tap water and given strong illumination. When adapting a mangrove from freshwater to saltwater it is important to make the transition slowly; otherwise the plant can suffer irreversible shock. First expose the plant to slightly brackish water and allow the water to become saltier over several days time. It is also important to be sure that the magnesium level of the saltwater is sufficient; see my earlier explanation re g a rding magnesium and its effect on salt tolerance."

https://www.twolittlefishies.com/images/mangrove_manual.pdf

I've been growing four out for about 10 months in FW, and I plan to document transitioning them to SW. I may try reaching out to Julian ahead of time to see if he has any more specific advice to give, and I'll likely take the transition fairly slowly.

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

What kind of growth rate do you typically see with mangroves?

I have 6 mangroves that I have planted in a small ‘lagoon’ tank in my classroom. In a month and a half, I have not seen any growth or even change in the plants.

Tank water is @ 1.024sg, and keep it at ~78F. While the tank itself has only been running for 2 months, it was made using sand and live rock from other seasoned tanks (complete with detritus, worms, etc). The tank is near south facing windows, and on sunny days, I would say the mangroves get about 2.5-3.5 hrs of direct sunlight, and another 5 hours of decent indirect light. I spray the leaves down at least twice per week.

The system is sort of a modification of an under-gravel filter, designed that way solely to increase flow of nutrients over roots of mangroves and turtle grass. I will also be adding depth to the bed so that I can a) have some anaerobic NO3 reduction, and (hopefully) allow the CO2/carbonic acid to break down some of the aragonite and provide calcium and carbonate.

The idea is that this lagoon system will serve as the sole filtration for a reef that I will connect to it.

The leaves feel soft (one leaf on one plant is a little bit tough feeling), but those mangroves have not budged an inch. The bio-mass of the system is low, but I’ve been pumping nutrients up in hopes of getting stuff going. The turtle grass is growing a little. Really not much in the way of algae growth. I’m sure the nutrient level is probably on the low side.

Thoughts?

 

[N.Sreefer]

What kind of growth rate do you typically see with mangroves?

I have 6 mangroves that I have planted in a small ‘lagoon’ tank in my classroom. In a month and a half, I have not seen any growth or even change in the plants.

Tank water is @ 1.024sg, and keep it at ~78F. While the tank itself has only been running for 2 months, it was made using sand and live rock from other seasoned tanks (complete with detritus, worms, etc). The tank is near south facing windows, and on sunny days, I would say the mangroves get about 2.5-3.5 hrs of direct sunlight, and another 5 hours of decent indirect light. I spray the leaves down at least twice per week.

The system is sort of a modification of an under-gravel filter, designed that way solely to increase flow of nutrients over roots of mangroves and turtle grass. I will also be adding depth to the bed so that I can a) have some anaerobic NO3 reduction, and (hopefully) allow the CO2/carbonic acid to break down some of the aragonite and provide calcium and carbonate.

The idea is that this lagoon system will serve as the sole filtration for a reef that I will connect to it.

The leaves feel soft (one leaf on one plant is a little bit tough feeling), but those mangroves have not budged an inch. The bio-mass of the system is low, but I’ve been pumping nutrients up in hopes of getting stuff going. The turtle grass is growing a little. Really not much in the way of algae growth. I’m sure the nutrient level is probably on the low side.

Thoughts?

They look to be exhibiting classic negative phototropism which is normally a result of inadequate lighting. How many watts is the lighting system above the mangroves if any? The window likely isn't enough by itself. Any signs of chlorosis? Hard to tell in pictures online.

Also the water level may be a little high for them you could try lowering the water level or raising the mangroves.

"
An experiment was done by Ellison and Farns-worth
( 1997) that included growing trees under
different water level conditions in a greenhouse to
see how sea level changes due to potential global
warming could affect the growth of R. mangle.
Trees were grown under current conditions, and
under a 16 cm decrease and a 16 cm increase in
sea level. The trees grown under current condi-tions
were larger. The other two were shorter and
narrower."

Slow growth rate is to be expected, they grow faster at root level and they still only average a mm of root growth a day in good culture conditions. Foliar growth often follows root growth with the plants growing slowly until well rooted. But the plants growing away from the window is an issue that should be addressed sooner rather than later.

 

[pgravis]

I would also say that these are trees, growth can be painfully slow until one day you realize they doubled their leaf count! Mine really took off once I gave them adequate light. I have some in a south facing window with a high powered freshwater light above them (Radion FW xr15). While they may survive with a clamp light with aa cheap led/spiral bulb, they want all the light you can give them. AI Prime has a FW light worth looking at, as well as the radion. I'm sure someone that knows planted tanks can recommend others as well.

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

They look to be exhibiting classic negative phototropism which is normally a result of inadequate lighting. How many watts is the lighting system above the mangroves if any? The window likely isn't enough by itself. Any signs of chlorosis? Hard to tell in pictures online.

Also the water level may be a little high for them you could try lowering the water level or raising the mangroves.

"
An experiment was done by Ellison and Farns-worth
( 1997) that included growing trees under
different water level conditions in a greenhouse to
see how sea level changes due to potential global
warming could affect the growth of R. mangle.
Trees were grown under current conditions, and
under a 16 cm decrease and a 16 cm increase in
sea level. The trees grown under current condi-tions
were larger. The other two were shorter and
narrower."

Slow growth rate is to be expected, they grow faster at root level and they still only average a mm of root growth a day in good culture conditions. Foliar growth often follows root growth with the plants growing slowly until well rooted. But the plants growing away from the window is an issue that should be addressed sooner rather than later.

It’s hard to tell in the pics because it’s a cloudy day, but they get a minimum of 3 hours a day of direct sunlight. The rest of the time, it’s a lot of indirect light. If that’s not enough light to grow them, I’m not sure how people are growing them under reef lighting.

On a sunny day, it looks like this in the middle of the day:

And unless it’s really cold out, that window is open, so that light isn’t even being filtered through glass.

No sign of chlorosis. Leaves are soft but firm, stems are firm. They aren’t really growing away from the window…that’s just the shape they arrived in. I was hoping they would start to straighten out as they grew.

It makes sense that I’m still waiting on root growth. I had a similar set-up with a freshwater aquarium using irises and cattails. The water was nutrient rich and the light is intense, so leaf growth was crazy. But coming out of rhizome cuttings, the leaf growth would typically outpace the nutrient and water uptake capacity of a limited root structure, the ends of the leaves would dry out. Eventually the roots grew enough to handle it, but that took some time.

My main focus right now is increasing the nutrient levels of the tank. There is hardly any unicellular algae growth, despite the substrate and rock being from established tanks. I have a few small fish and inverts, but for the last week, I’ve just been adding far more food than the animals can consume just to get the nutrient load up.

Finally, I have another 30lbs of sand, so my plan is to add it to the rear half of the tank where the plants are, raising the water level to the top of the tank, and maybe having the mangroves in 5-6” of water.

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

@N.Sreefer I took your advice and looked to move these mangroves into shallower water. Once I dug them up, 4 of the 6 exhibited a decent amount of root growth:

There were 2 others that didn’t look great, and had just a small amount of new root growth. I pulled those and set them up in a light brackish/nearly freshwater set-up and will see if they respond to that.

But I was definitely happy to at least see some root growth on the others. I have added more aragonite and moved them up so that now they’re in about 5” of water.

 

[Ichtha_yo Stuff]

Julian has a ton of mangroves growing in his yard. I sorta assumed he started many of his in FW, then acclimated them to SW? I think Giga had his growing outside in FW as well, before he moved them to his SW tanks. However, it does seem to be something that many people struggle with, so it would be nice to have a definitive answer on how to acclimate FW grown mangroves to full salinity SW. Julian actually mentions being able to transition mangroves from FW to SW in his mangrove manual (pg 6):

"Mangroves can suffer "shock" when they are moved. This is manifest by wilting leaves or loss of leaves. When the leaves wilt or drop off in a moved plant, I place it in tap water and give it strong illumination. Usually the tree recovers within a few days. If the leaves have all dropped off, the top bud will usually open within 10 days if the tree is placed in tap water and given strong illumination. When adapting a mangrove from freshwater to saltwater it is important to make the transition slowly; otherwise the plant can suffer irreversible shock. First expose the plant to slightly brackish water and allow the water to become saltier over several days time. It is also important to be sure that the magnesium level of the saltwater is sufficient; see my earlier explanation re g a rding magnesium and its effect on salt tolerance."

https://www.twolittlefishies.com/images/mangrove_manual.pdf

I've been growing four out for about 10 months in FW, and I plan to document transitioning them to SW. I may try reaching out to Julian ahead of time to see if he has any more specific advice to give, and I'll likely take the transition fairly slowly.

I have successfully grown mangroves outside in freshwater and converted them to freshwater. I took about 4 weeks topping off the tank and doing 20 percent water changes with saltwater. Here is a picture of the tank and it has been running at a salinity of 34 ppt for since April. The mangroves were grown from pods which I collected. I also cut them back a few times to give them a fuller look when growing them outside in the freshwater.

 

[Ichtha_yo Stuff]

I think one of the issues that hobbyist have converting mangroves from freshwater to saltwater is when they transplant them you have to take great care not to damage the root system. If the roots get cracked or broken then the osmotic pressure the mangroves use to excrete salt water is damaged and the salt water gets into the root system and the tree.

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

I think one of the issues that hobbyist have converting mangroves from freshwater to saltwater is when they transplant them you have to take great care not to damage the root system. If the roots get cracked or broken then the osmotic pressure the mangroves use to excrete salt water is damaged and the salt water gets into the root system and the tree.

I had seen that discussed before, so I was super careful to be really gentle with the roots.

The two plants that didn’t show much in the way of of new root growth appeared to have some root damage. Even though there wasn’t much root growth, there was some, so I assume the plants can be saved. Those are the two I put in freshwater.

The other 4 plants had some decent root growth, so maybe part of the slowness of those plants doing anything had to do with having to acclimate to saltwater before adding to their root structure?

 

[Ichtha_yo Stuff]

Yes if they have root damage put them in fresh. Let them heal. Then you can acclimate them to saltwater. Personally I like to grow them outside in freshwater to the size and shape I want them to be then move them over to a saltwater tank. I live in Florida so these is rather easy and doesn’t take much effort.

 

[DanC40]

Hello everyone.
Just had a question
I had purchased two mangrove shoots about 1 month and half ago. They are in my sump with a grow light right on top. So far nothing has grown except some roots. I don't have super high nutrients. It is a new tank about 3 months but it is pretty stable.

Ph 8.2
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 2ppm
Kh. 11
Phosphate as of today .06 was .25 ppm but I bought some gfo and reactor and trying to bring it to a lower stable number due to algae hair algae.
Calcium 420ppm
Magnesium 1290ppm

I also never had corraline algae read it is beneficial. I use rodi water.

So I wanted to know 1. Is there anything that I can do or am doing that could be slowing the growth again I have a small bulb grow light on it 18watss it's purple and violet color.
2. Should I worry about growing corraline algae to help me with nuisance algae.


I appreciate any experience and info. Thanks.

 

[Eric R.]

Hello everyone.
Just had a question
I had purchased two mangrove shoots about 1 month and half ago. They are in my sump with a grow light right on top. So far nothing has grown except some roots. I don't have super high nutrients. It is a new tank about 3 months but it is pretty stable.

Ph 8.2
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 2ppm
Kh. 11
Phosphate as of today .06 was .25 ppm but I bought some gfo and reactor and trying to bring it to a lower stable number due to algae hair algae.
Calcium 420ppm
Magnesium 1290ppm

I also never had corraline algae read it is beneficial. I use rodi water.

So I wanted to know 1. Is there anything that I can do or am doing that could be slowing the growth again I have a small bulb grow light on it 18watss it's purple and violet color.
2. Should I worry about growing corraline algae to help me with nuisance algae.


I appreciate any experience and info. Thanks.

@DanC40 couple questions:

1) are you growing the mangroves to try and lower your nutrients, or because you like mangroves and want to grow them/look at them?

2) What else is in this area of your sump: live rock, dry rock, sand, snails?

I would personally suggest using a full spectrum, daylight temperature grow bulb for your mangroves, and something fairly strong. I'm growing mine under a 45w (actually 45, not a 45w equivalent) 6500k led grow bulb.

Mangroves also just grow somewhat slowly in our tanks. The folks that tend to get the most growth grow them outside in warm areas year-round under natural sunlight in freshwater, and then bring them indoors after a year or two. Your growth rate sounds pretty normal so far.

As far as your second question, are you wanting to grow corraline algae in your sump or display? That also takes a while to grow, but will do so under the right conditions, if you introduce some from actual live rock, rock rubble, or on a frag plug. My best suggestion for keeping algae low now isn't to try keeping your nutrients super low, but to get the right herbivores, whether snails, fish, or urchins. Also manual removal/control.

It takes a long time for tanks started with only dry rock to "mature".

 

[Eric R.]

Also, if you haven't watched it, lots of good info on algae control and reef keeping generally on Reef Beef. Find it at the reefbeefpodcast.com. Or watch it on youtube.

 

[SauceyReef]

Hey everyone! you may see some of my other threads in this sub channel. I am finally about to get the mangroves! Tank has been ready for a few months.

Big question: How deep should the sand bed be for their roots??

 

[Alex's Nano Reef]

So i have a 20g nuvo AIO tank and im thinking about taking one of the media baskets and taking the dividers out using some marine pure gems at the bottom and then fill the rest u with the 2 little fishies substrate. and planting a mangrove. does anyone have any objections or know of anyone who has done this before. ive been trying to find a tank on here with one back there but cant seem to find it. i read they dont really do much for your tank and dont really impact the parameters to much so i thought i might pick up a mangrove at ReefAPalooza nyc later this year. but I'm trying to figure out if its a viable idea by no means do i have any experience keeping mangroves.