I'm sorry - is this wisteria = hygrophilia diformis?
I thought it was an easy grower (hence the nickname water weeds)?

I bought 3-4 stems of hygrophilia diformis and after 4 months I have to
throw the trimmings away every week now.
Must be a different variety?




"Giancarlo Podio" wrote in message
m...
It just sounds like the top is shadowing itself, with well distributed
light this plant will grow well even in 1WPG, it does not require much
light at all, but it will shadow itself and that will give you the
bare stems you have now. You can also try to prune back some of the
stems rather than topping them and replanting the tips (if that's what
you do), this will give you smaller tips on the new growth which will
shadow the lower parts of the plants less than the big tips that
eventually grow from the replanted tops. The hair algae is just
getting caught up on the stem, I guess it's more visible because the
stem is bare. I think your situation is quite common for this plant,
thinning it out and pruning it regularly will help, you certainly have
more than enough light than this plant requires.

Hope that helps
Giancarlo Podio

"RedForeman ©®" wrote in message
...
|| How does the top part of the plant look? Any signs of deficiencies
|| such as pale or yellow coloring? I haven't had any problems growing
|| this plant in both high and low light, obviously once it shades
|| itself
|| the lower part of the plant becomes bare, but it also usually sends
|| horizontal shoots from the base to seek brighter areas where it will
|| again grow vertical. Do you use any kind of substrate fertilizers?
|| Like most of my rooted plants, I find I can eliminate most
|| deficiencies with Seachem Tabs. If you haven't tried yet, I'd suggest
|| placing a tab under the plant and see if things change. As far as
|| shadowing goes, it sounds like you have a single PC bulb over your
|| tank, although it's enough lighting, a single bulb does cause more
|| shadows than multiple bulbs, but I don't know I'd suggest anyone to
|| change their lighting to grow wisteria ;-) Perhaps thinning out the
|| top part and any surrounding plants may help the situation. I
|| wouldn't
|| however blame lighting on any algae growth, although the base of the
|| stem may become bare from insufficient lighting, algae is growing
|| because of other reasons, could be that there are no critters that
|| eat
|| that kind of algae or an imbalance in your nutrients... You know the
|| usual stuff... Raising CO2 may certainly help.
||
|| What are your NO3 and FE levels?
||
|| I have found CSM on it's own to cause more green spot algae than some
|| other products I've used in the past, I've since mixed CSM, Flourish
|| and Flourish FE in equal proportions. Once I finish my lifetime
|| supply
|| of CSM I plan to go back to mixing TMG and Flourish as that seemed to
|| give me the best results. Obviously your milage may vary...
||
|| Hope that helps
|| Giancarlo Podio
|| www.podio.com

The lighting probably isn't enough to sustain the 'amount' of wysteria I
had, so I thinned it out... There was great growth from the top, and it
doubled in size in 2 weeks, but in that 2weeks, the bottom half of it
became
covered in hair... the top, bright color, no yellowing or
discoloration....
very nice... I didn't even notice the algae for the 2nd week because the
top
was catching my eyes it was so pretty...

Tabs, yep, I've used them, but haven't recently... I used to put them
under
my amazons, but have since moved them out...
I'm dosing with PMDD, and have flourite as the base...NO3 usually isn't
very
high at all, sometimes its near 25ppm, and rarely over 40ppm *if I'm
remembering correctly* and still waiting for the Iron test... :-( I've
decided to have the LFS test for it....

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is that better??