POTHOS\MONEY PLANT IN DEEP SUB

Come right on in. You're it, Father Fish. Nice to have you with us. Ram Kumar asked the question yesterday, and he's posted it again. Thank you, Ram, for doing that. I saw it yesterday and didn't get to it. We got distracted. He wants to know, is pothos plant planted in the deep substrate aquarium and grown with other plants? Not exactly. The pothos plant, the leaves need to be out of the water, not in the water. It grows immersed. That means above the water level. The roots, however, will grow deep and strong into the water column, and they'll go down into the substrate, but the leaves have to be above it. Now, once it becomes established, it will grow rapidly, and it will take over a fish room. They're really glorious. It's a beautiful plant to grow out. I've had it here at the shop a couple of times, and it really is quite nice, but again, it grows. The roots grow into the water. The leaves grow out of the water, so when you get a cutting from a pothos, put the stem in the water and leave the roots out. I mean the leaves out. Put the roots or part of the stem in the water, leave the leaves out, and it will send roots down into the water column. It'll take up nutrients from the water, and it'll grow like a weed. It's just really quite amazing and really quite lovely. You can do that with various other kinds of ivy as well. I've seen a couple people actually plant it down in their tanks, and I think it has worked for a few, just throwing that in. Yeah, I haven't done it, but I've seen it work. Yeah, the leaves have to come up out of the water, though. But they managed to get a couple pieces growing the whole thing under the water. I haven't tried it, but I've seen it. I think you can keep it there for a while, but I don't believe it has the ability to take air or nutrients, the leaves, directly out of the water. Let me say one more thing about this, because it's significant. The reason stem plants grow up out of the water is because they can feed from the air, from the environment. They can take in air more easily from out of the water than in the water. They'll grow much faster emerged than they will immersed. And so if you have plants reaching for the top, they're reaching to get out of the water. Yeah, that's right. Let me out of here. But they will get tremendous amount of nutrition from the water, through the roots, from the water and from the substrate. It's just that their leaves require being in the open. Now, there are plants, sword plants, a lot of others, that actually have two different kinds of leaves. One is a leaf that grows in the water. One is a leaf that grows out of the water. And you can have both of those leaves on the same plant. So you might notice that as well. Yeah, I was surprised. I've had pothos in the water any number of times where the cutting has fallen in and it dies. You know, it'll live for a while. It'll live for weeks, maybe even a month or two. But eventually it's going to die. It's not going to be able to survive being completely underwater. I don't believe the leaves are capable. They'll live for a short period of time and grow underwater, but will eventually die. So you have limited time of success and then they will eventually. Yeah, they can get up above the water level. Get at least one leaf up above the water. Then they will survive. Yes. Bye Susan. Thanks for stopping by. Thanks for plugging in and watching and being a part of this channel and this series. I hope you found something you've never seen before. Have a great day. Nice sharing with us. Come on back.