The life and times of indoor plants

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As some may remember, I've been keeping my water hyacinths indoors over the past two Winters to have a starter crop each Spring (they're $5 each here, very costly!)... Well this year I've had a huge problem. The plants have nearly died off, leaves withering, no new growth. I tried adding extra fertilizer, confirmed all of the light bulbs were working, and even bought a new air pump to give them a bit more circulation. Nothing was working and all of my plants have been trimmed back to nothing but stems and air bulbs.

I finally figured out what was different this year... This is the first time I didn't try keeping a few goldfish or minnows in the tub with the plants. More importantly, I did not bother adding a heater in the tub. When I stuck my hand in the water, it was COLD. Sitting on the carpet in my heated basement, and the plants were still freezing to death.

So I pulled out the heater from last year, dropped it in the tub, changed the water and double-dosed the fertilizer, and here just a few days later my plants are sprouting out new leaves, and I have a dragonfly flying around! So lesson learned -- if you're going to keep tropical plants you also have to keep them warm.
 
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Happy to hear you worked it out! Those are very frustrating plants at times!

I love them, but my fish eat them! I've tried so many methods of TRYING to keep the fish away from the roots - nothing works for me.
 
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Mine do too, however I have a lot of irises growing in the water, so I think my fish also nibble on those, so the hyacinths are able to keep growing.
 

mrsclem

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I just picked up 55 & 29 gallon aquariums from craigslist to try to winter over my tropical water lilies. I may put some of the other tropical that I brought in and let dry out go in the water. Planning on putting the 55gal. in my living room window that gets afternoon sun. What water temp do you recommend?
 
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I believe this heater is set for around 76-78 degrees? It's just a typical aquarium heater, nothing fancy. However a word of advice, hyacinths need a lot of light and fertilizer to keep growing. I have a 30-gallon tub and have four 4-foot fluorescent lights (65k temperature). We use a product by Seachem called "Flourish" to fertilize the plants (about a cap full every two weeks after doing water changes). It takes a bit to get set up for maintaining the hyacinths, but then they're just about maintenance-free through the Winter.
 
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Might have to try that next year. Pricey here too. I have some red stemmed parrots feather in my garage (heated) in a bucket water. It is doing well. I thought someone said the red stemmed variety did not fair well in cold winter temps. So thought I would give it a try. One south facing window nearby.
 
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@mrsclem are you the one who grows cattails in a 5 gal bucket next to the pond? If so, Curious how you do it. Holes in the bottom of the bucket? Regular soil in there?
 

addy1

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Might have to try that next year. Pricey here too. I have some red stemmed parrots feather in my garage (heated) in a bucket water. It is doing well. I thought someone said the red stemmed variety did not fair well in cold winter temps. So thought I would give it a try. One south facing window nearby.
I put it deep, it sits in a pot around 1.5 feet deep in the pond, come spring pull it back out and it grows great. A little I left out last winter did die, but it was a miserable winter.
 
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What's the minimum temperature at which you'd put water hyacinth out in the pond? I'd like to get some in the water as early as possible to help remove the nutrients.
 
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You know, I think it depends a lot on how much direct sunlight they get. I usually put mine out once the water temp hits a solid 50+ degrees (F), but they do not seem to grow at all until the water gets closer to 60 degrees. Because of all the trees in my neighborhood, my pond doesn't get a whole lot of direct sunlight once the leaves grow in, but maybe if you have more sunlight shining on them, your plants will grow at 50 degrees.

In the Fall, my plants start withering at around 40 degrees, and they definitely will not survive even a mild frost. Unfortunately algae is much more hardy than the hyacinths, so I usually have a lot of string algae in my pond well before I am able to start putting out the hyacinths. I also have a lot of irises growing in my pond, and even they don't seem to help with the algae.
 

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