how hardy is the hardiest crypt? Stretching the limits of plants?

S

scavenger

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Aug 17, 2005
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I have been told that crypts are some of the hardiest plants around, so easy in fact, as far as I've heard, some people have left crypts in a small bucket of water in the back of their closet for months with no exaggeration and have them survive.
So, when it came to buying my first plant, hearing about how easy they were, naturally I chose the crypts.
A week ago I bought a green wendtii crypt for my 4 gallon tank. I just plopped it into my little tank with nothing but room lighting and no fertilizer but fish poop. So far, it's been doing OK for a week.

But then, when I read about plantkeeping on this forum, it seems that everyone describes it as being so hard, with special lighting and fertilizer, this and that. All I want is something that is the most low maintenance possible. I don't want anything harder to care for than a houseplant that one puts on one's windowsill. I hope my crypts really are as easy as people say. Plus, are there any other aquatic plants that can survive with the bare minimum of room lighting and no extra care? What is the limits of aquatic plants' endurance?
 
Crypts. are sort of an enigma. Yes, they are easy to grow and care for in that they don't require a lot of light and fertilization and don't need to be pruned, for the most part.
They also have an 'endearing' habit of melting (breaking down into mush:)), sometimes for no apparent reason. Sometimes because of water temp changes, fertilization changes, moving them, or because they are having a bad day.
When this charming quality happens, those of us that love the little buggers just roll with the punches and wait for them to re-establish themselves which it will do, almost without exception.
Picture in your mind your beloved plant melting as if it were wax and heated with a flame. Well that's pretty much what it will look like if/when it happens. If you have enough of them for a long enough period of time you will almost certainly experience this phenomena. When you do just consider yourself part of the 'club'. :)

Len
 
Well, if the crypts don't work out for ya, you might consider java moss, java fern, and anubia sp..
Never left a crypt in a bucket, but j.moss, j.fern sure. Had j.moss growing in the trap in my wash sink!
 
Crypts

Crypts were the plants that I first started growing, and grow they did. Although they grow relatively slowely they will evntually be everywhere. Crypts do go through the "melting" that was described. My advice to prevent this is to keep the temperature constant, only replant or move your cryps if it is absolutely necesarry and to keep the water level in your tank constant. My understanding of why crypts often shed all their leaves is this, crypts are bog plants that can grow fully submerged ot emergent these plants shed their leaves to adapt to a new strategy for using light and nutrients, this is why you need to keep the water level constant. Crypts are also very sensitive to being replanted, after which they generally lose many of their leaves but will a almost always come back from it.

Hope this helps
 
what is the bare minimum of lighting for a crypt? Can they survive purely with room lighting, or even in a dim room with a small window?
 
My girlfriend has some crypts, mostly parva, in a 5g tank when her lights went out she didn't bother to get a new bulb for almost a month, despite my warnings. Her tank is not by a window and only received ambient light, but the crypts were all still alive and even produced new plants?!?! These plants obviously had very low lighting requirements but I would always keep at least one flourescent tube for crypts.
 
My favorite low light plant is the red melon sword. I have these in my 55 gallon tank with a robust (that's a joke) 40W of total lighting, in my 10 gallon newt tank with 20W of light, in my 5.5 gallon with just a lamp over it, and in a 2 gallon betta bowl with no light except room light. All of them are doing well. I also have the green and red wendti, java moss (also impossible to kill), and a few java ferns (just hanging in there). I find that most low and moderate plants will do OK--not robust, but stay green and grow slowly in low light. I just cut off any dead leaves and keep trying to find what works.

Jackie
 
There area some Crypts that will grow in Brackish water. Balansae, ciliata or pontedifolia. One of the two I forget which one. On a whole all crypts are very hardy and have little demands.

thePlantMan cometh..............
 
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