Bucephalandra, who's got what.

[Foxpuppet]

Here's mine (finally maybe tapatalk will let this happen)

Woot - success

Edited January 26, 2015 by Foxpuppet

[lodo]

Believe this to be a theia species.

Waiting for better submerged growth.

[Shrimpy Daddy]

Hi all,

 

Recently, I did some testing on buce for about 2 month to find out what will be the best method to accelerate the grow. Hence, I would like to share some of my findings (initially I wanted to post on my blog but my blog is under-maintenance).

1. Lighting - Buce prefers much higher lighting than anubias. However, if you keep them at very low light, it will survive and colour up but not growing much. The colouring up includes turning the emerged-grown leaves into submerge colour. But when you turn up the lighting to medium intensity (similar to the intensity for growing Staurogyne Repens) and does not inject CO2, the growth and colouring up stop. Once you inject CO2 the, the growth and colouring accelerated much faster. But it will concentrate on growing new submerge leaves instead of colouring up the old emerged-grown leaves. As such, I conclude the best lighting will be medium-low. If you planning to use stronger intensity, Otocinclus is must. Or else, the buce will be covered by diatom. Another interesting part of lighting is that when the plant receive sufficient lighting, they will grow leaves at the bottom instead of the top. Hence if you plant them into substrate at bright area and when you see them never grow any new leaves, use the twister and lift them up a little. You will see tons of leaves growing below. You may need to do this once in awhile. Before you do this, make sure there are some roots that attached to the substrate.
2. CO2 - Tested from 5ppm to 40ppm and there is no significant differences. The key factor is as long as you inject CO2. Just a tiny bit at 5ppm will be good enough.
3. NO3 - Tested from 5ppm to 25ppm and there is not really significant differences (I increase CO2 and lighting intensity when I increase NO3). However if the NO3 is below 5 and below and when lighting is strong, the leaves will turn yellow and diatom will form. As such, I will recommend maintain the NO3 at 10ppm (provided your pH is above 5.8).
4. PO4 - All my tanks are consistently with 0.75 to 1ppm of PO4. Hence, I can't tell from my experiment whether they will affect buce or not.
5. Trace Fertiliser - They love trace fert. The more you dose, the better the colour and the thicker and rubber the leaves. This makes me suspect the logic for them not growing new leaves fast. I think they have priority on using energy and nutrients to improve existing leaves, instead of growing new leaves like most plants.
6. Best Way to Propagate - Trim them as often as possible. Once they grow to a decent height, they will grow very dense leaves. Once this happens, it is almost impossible to cut at their rhizome. For a new plant you bought, if the rhizome is long, cut them to small multiple leaves. A 2 to 4 leaves new plant grows best initially. If the rhizome has cut and the leaves are little, they will grow many leaves at one time. I did an experiment by taking a long rhizome with 2 leaves and use pen knife and do multiple cuts. End up, I get like 8 leaves growing at the same time (even in non-CO2 injected tank).
7. Planting Area - The roots and rhizome loves substrate. Hence, they grow even much faster if you plant them into rich substrate (this is align with my finding on they love trace nutrients). The rhizome will not rot like Anubias. As such, Buce could be plant almost every where you like, except area that is high up and next to the lighting.
8. Temperature - Tested 26C and 30C and they are doing just fine. Many claims that they melt at high temperature. I think this got to do with nutrients level, which is the same as lighting intensity. Higher temperature will have higher metabolic rate that may have the same effect as high light intensity.

If sufficient nutrients (including CO2) are provided and lighting intensity is not too strong, don't worry about the leaves melting. They will grow back later on. Personally, I prefer them to melt away all the emerge-grown leaves and grow out the smaller, rubbery, thick and colour leaves.

 

But there is one annoying thing you need to take note (not much people observed). Buce's young leaves are tender and tasty. Shrimp and Otocinclus love to much them. If you are keeping buce with them, make sure they are well fed. Or else, you will find your buce leaves start to have bit and pieces being bitten off.

 

Hope these information help. ;)

Edited January 29, 2015 by Shrimpy Daddy

[Squiggle]

Awesome article dude, very well written & thank you for doing the hard yards researching the best way to grow these lovely plants, I'm sure there are a lot of people who will be using this info to grow bigger & better Buces!

[Shrimpy Daddy]

[lodo]

Question. What was the Kelvin output of your light? Also if led what was the watts? I feel this would make a significant difference in growth

[Shrimpy Daddy]

I have 16 x CREE XML, 8 x CREE XPe (enforce red spectrum) and 8 x Philip Radeon (enforce blue spectrum) over 60cm cube tank. All LEDs are running at 15 to 40 duty cycle during the testing for different scenario. In conclusion, I find that the cool white light at 28 to 30% give best reflection of colour and the red and blue supporting lightings are suffice at 20 to 28%.

Kelvin does not tell the true spectrum. As long as you are getting a light designed for plant, it should be good. Buce prefers more red light than blue light to grow. But the blue light is preferred by shrimp and to reflect the colour of some Buce. As such, it is better to have lighting that has control over individual channel.

Given said that, since Buce loves medium low lighting, lighting is not everything. So on what evidence I claimed this? I tested with 30% cool white and 8% red and blue supporting. The result is that they still grow as per normal.

I have been in planted tank hobby for 20 years. Personally I find that lighting requirement is always glorified. What I find with most plants Is that they will do just fine with sufficient lighting (not too much). The more important factors are the CO2 and nutrients. If you look at the biological aspect, light is just an activator for chlorophyll. If you ramp up the activity of chlorophyll and not supplying enough nutrients, the plant will either shutdown the growth function or they will die. One good analogy is that you have a 800bhp V10 engine but you only have 1 liter fuel tank. Once your engine run at 200mph for 20 sec and it will drop dead. ;)

[Squiggle]

Nice analogy dude, good work!

[piterrrrr]

A few shots of my buce ;)

 

mini catherinae "green/purple"

 

 

 

 

"melawi"

 

 

"velvet leaf 3"

 

 

"sintang"

[Foxpuppet]

So this little brownie ghost I got has been going great... But the older leaves started to develop some BBA. I gave it a Bleach bath to kill it off which worked a treat. Now that it's dying off I could see it was big enough that I could give it a trim.

So from 1 plant I got 5 very nice little cuttings one of which has now flowered.

And the BBA riddled rhizomes got split and is now got new shoots

Added to my sp.

Kedagang x1

Belindae x2

Catherine X1/2 (lol so small)

[lodo]

Quick input, hopefully can get good, proper pictures once algae clears up

Black centipede

Brownie jade

Kedagang red

Foreground: brownie ghost

Background: lamundu mini purple

[Foxpuppet]

Since previous post I have added Dark Hades

[lodo]

That's looking good!

I need to work on more colours besides green. Guessing most people it's from ferts and light mostly?

[Foxpuppet]

That's looking good!

I need to work on more colours besides green. Guessing most people it's from ferts and light mostly?

AFAIK some sp. have different colors.

My brownie ghost is green and so is Catherine but belindae has slight purple. Kedagang is velvety red and dark Hades is blue/purple

[lodo]

I believe kedagang has a few colour varieties, brownie ghost gets a complete mix of colours also.

[Foxpuppet]

Tonight was a chance to do a new batch of cuttings from my small Buce collection.

1 Belindae became 3

Tiny Catherine has been struggling so this division could make or break it

My original Brownie Ghost from TC has been going great

Trimmed down

Planted into Kitz glass, will lower down as too close to light but was good for pics

Only kedagang and Hades left to cut down now

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[Jo]

Oh I'm so glad I just found this topic! 

I got a Buce as a gift (I think it had blue somewhere in it's name, also perhaps brownie?) and it never did very well at the top of my tank so in the last trim I moved it.  I looked in the tank last night and WHOA, it looks like it's about to flower.

I'm very excited to see what the flower is going to look like :)

[Foxpuppet]

Oh I'm so glad I just found this topic! 

I got a Buce as a gift (I think it had blue somewhere in it's name, also perhaps brownie?) and it never did very well at the top of my tank so in the last trim I moved it.  I looked in the tank last night and WHOA, it looks like it's about to flower.



I'm very excited to see what the flower is going to look like :)

The flowers are nice but don't last long and unfortunately have not allowed for propagation AFAIK.


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[Foxpuppet]

Mine have exploded since my last post here.




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[inkevnito]

@Foxpuppet So many! Did your catherinae and belindae grow out into a big clump yet? 

[Foxpuppet]

@Foxpuppet: So many! Did your catherinae and belindae grow out into a big clump yet? 

Belindae is still tiny
Catherinae plugging along ok but not big or a clump LOL


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[inkevnito]

@Foxpuppet So, catherinae is growing faster than belindae in your experience?

How much does a stem or two of belindae go for nowadays? I just recently split mine into singular stems :)

[Matuva]

Here are mines. Though, I'm not able to tell their name, as I messed with the tags when I received them.

So as not hijack this thread, I have opened one here :

 

Edited August 21, 2017 by Matuva