Giga
New member
Let's start out with some science and descriptions of mangroves. This is a little lengthy, but it is a good read and should have everything you should need for good husbandry. Also I am neither a biologist nor scientist, I'm just an addicted hobbyist like everyone else lol. So this is not the say all end all-I'm just passing my experience on to everyone else. Also all these are my pics but a couple
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangrove
"œMangroves are various types of trees up to medium height and shrubs that grow in saline coastal sediment habitats in the tropics and subtropics "“ mainly between latitudes 25° N and 25° S. The remaining mangrove forest areas of the world in 2000 was 53,190 square miles (137,760 km²) spanning 118 countries and territories. The word is used in at least three senses: (1) most broadly to refer to the habitat and entire plant assemblage or mangal, for which the terms mangrove forest biome, mangrove swamp and mangrove forest are also used, (2) to refer to all trees and large shrubs in the mangrove swamp, and (3) narrowly to refer to the mangrove family of plants, the Rhizophoraceae, or even more specifically just to mangrove trees of the genus Rhizophora
About 110 species are considered "mangroves", in the sense of being a tree that grows in such a saline swamp, though only a few are from the mangrove plant genus, Rhizophora. However, a given mangrove swamp typically features only a small number of tree species. It is not uncommon for a mangrove forest in the Caribbean to feature only three or four tree species. For comparison, the tropical rainforest biome contains thousands of tree species, but this is not to say mangrove forests lack diversity. Though the trees themselves are few in species, the ecosystem these trees create provides a home for a great variety of other organisms."
Now that that you know a little about mangroves, there are three common mangroves found in the aquarium hobby- Rhizophora mangle/Red mangrove, Avicennia germinans/Black mangrove, and Laguncularia racemosa/White Mangrove(most common) as well as Avicennia marina Grey Mangrove(can be called white mangrove as well)
(Not my pic)
Let's take a look at the most common mangrove in the aquarium hobby Rhizophora mangle or Red mangrove. I'm not going to go into great detail about mangroves in the wild and how they grow but I will touch on how they go about doing their thing.
Planting your red mangrove -The above picture is a picture of one of my mangroves and the arrow is pointing to the lenticels (gas exchange hole), which is how mangroves are able to adapt to such low oxygen conditions-such as growing in water and mud. The picture above also shows the prop roots which is another reason they can grow in water, as they grow above it. One of my observations is that the roots should be anchored (planted) in some sort of growing medium (sand, mud, silt).
What this looks like (Above pic) is putting the seed pod(s) in the sand as opposed to have them floating in the water, you will get far better growth using this method. If they are always floating in water the mangrove will not thrive and possibly wither away, as it can cause the mangroves seed pod to put too much energy to producing roots(this is not always true but coupled with low lighting-at least weak growth-at worst death). *If you have some bonsai experience this can come in handy to grow them in a shallow medium. Just be careful when trimming roots as the roots are a spongy type of roots under the soil and red mangrove are finicky about root pruning. Getting aerial roots on your red mangrove comes down to a couple things.
Time-the seeds need to mature and age-I got aerial roots at the 1.5 year mark
Planting them correctly-planting them like I said above and the mangrove will produce aerial roots once the seed pod is no longer green and a humid environment is provided
To spray or not to spray? There seems to be a consensus that spraying your red mangroves is good for them, but why is that? First let's look at how mangroves deal with salt, because salt is bad for any plant-it's just mangrove have found a way to deal with it and thrive in that environment. There are two ways that mangroves deal with salt water-don't let it in in the first place or allow it to pass through but kick it out and let the rain deal with it.
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The picture above is a Red mangrove leaf off one of my mangroves and if you notice or have a mangrove in your tank it's a very waxy stiff type of leaf. The reason for this is to limit the water loss and the leaf is where a lot of fresh water is stored. Reds are able to close their pores off to limit water vapor loss during photosynthesis. They are also able to point there leaves directly at the sun to avoid the harsh tropical sun if it gets too intense. The main way Reds deal with salt water is to prevent the salt from entering from the roots via there spongy suberin(waxy material related to cork)roots.
*
*
These roots prevent 95%ish of saline water from entering and the extra salt is stored throughout the tree. There seems to be conflicting theories on this, as some say it's stored in the leaves then the leaf is dropped, but other stories say those leaves dropped have the same saline % as normal green leaves. Not being a scientist myself I'll say whatever floats your boat.* So the main reason to spray the leaves down is to help red mangrove fresh water loss and help clear the pores of dust as red mangrove do not extrude salt through their leaves. This also simulates there natural environment getting rained on all the time-I find that this should be done a few times a week( I usually do 1-2 times with RO water as RODI water seems to be too pure and can have a negative effect long term. This is just my observation so you'll probably be fine with RODI.
*
(Not my pic)
*
Now Black mangroves(above) is a very different story-mostly. As you see above black mangroves take in saline water, but the main difference is they expel it out there leaves and let the rain wash it away (white mangroves do this slightly differently but gonna lump them in here too). They have a different growing style but have many of the same aspects. Normal you find black mangroves more inland as they have the more typical trunk like your everyday tree but you can find them mixed in with red's. The main reason you find them more inland is there roots grow underground, but due to the fact that they grow in the same ground as reds that's hypoxic (no 0²) they grow pneumatophores. Pneumatophores are roots that grow above ground straight up and take in 0² (via lenticels). So it's imperative you spray black mangrove leaves completely, as the salt will build up on the leaves if grown is a marine environment.
*
*
What this looks like, if you want them in your aquarium, is to some get sort of container or aquarium and have the water lvl just below the growing medium (sand, mud or the like), and place the seeds on the sand and wait. Make sure the top of the sand is moist as this will trigger growth. Here's the tricky part. There are two main factors to getting you black mangrove to grow pneumatophores.
*
Time which is simple-Just wait. Mine started to form them just after the one year mark.
*
You need to create a hypoxic environment to force the black mangroves to need 0². I did this by growing them in highly organic mud/loam-about 4" deep. I have also seen growing them a couple inches underwater in gravel and they would put out pneumatophores-but I have not tested this and it was done in fresh water (which I'll touch on this in a second)
*
The seeds are in the little Tupperware just above the water line-sorry old pic from last tank
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangrove
"œMangroves are various types of trees up to medium height and shrubs that grow in saline coastal sediment habitats in the tropics and subtropics "“ mainly between latitudes 25° N and 25° S. The remaining mangrove forest areas of the world in 2000 was 53,190 square miles (137,760 km²) spanning 118 countries and territories. The word is used in at least three senses: (1) most broadly to refer to the habitat and entire plant assemblage or mangal, for which the terms mangrove forest biome, mangrove swamp and mangrove forest are also used, (2) to refer to all trees and large shrubs in the mangrove swamp, and (3) narrowly to refer to the mangrove family of plants, the Rhizophoraceae, or even more specifically just to mangrove trees of the genus Rhizophora
About 110 species are considered "mangroves", in the sense of being a tree that grows in such a saline swamp, though only a few are from the mangrove plant genus, Rhizophora. However, a given mangrove swamp typically features only a small number of tree species. It is not uncommon for a mangrove forest in the Caribbean to feature only three or four tree species. For comparison, the tropical rainforest biome contains thousands of tree species, but this is not to say mangrove forests lack diversity. Though the trees themselves are few in species, the ecosystem these trees create provides a home for a great variety of other organisms."
Now that that you know a little about mangroves, there are three common mangroves found in the aquarium hobby- Rhizophora mangle/Red mangrove, Avicennia germinans/Black mangrove, and Laguncularia racemosa/White Mangrove(most common) as well as Avicennia marina Grey Mangrove(can be called white mangrove as well)
(Not my pic)
Let's take a look at the most common mangrove in the aquarium hobby Rhizophora mangle or Red mangrove. I'm not going to go into great detail about mangroves in the wild and how they grow but I will touch on how they go about doing their thing.
Planting your red mangrove -The above picture is a picture of one of my mangroves and the arrow is pointing to the lenticels (gas exchange hole), which is how mangroves are able to adapt to such low oxygen conditions-such as growing in water and mud. The picture above also shows the prop roots which is another reason they can grow in water, as they grow above it. One of my observations is that the roots should be anchored (planted) in some sort of growing medium (sand, mud, silt).
What this looks like (Above pic) is putting the seed pod(s) in the sand as opposed to have them floating in the water, you will get far better growth using this method. If they are always floating in water the mangrove will not thrive and possibly wither away, as it can cause the mangroves seed pod to put too much energy to producing roots(this is not always true but coupled with low lighting-at least weak growth-at worst death). *If you have some bonsai experience this can come in handy to grow them in a shallow medium. Just be careful when trimming roots as the roots are a spongy type of roots under the soil and red mangrove are finicky about root pruning. Getting aerial roots on your red mangrove comes down to a couple things.
Time-the seeds need to mature and age-I got aerial roots at the 1.5 year mark
Planting them correctly-planting them like I said above and the mangrove will produce aerial roots once the seed pod is no longer green and a humid environment is provided
To spray or not to spray? There seems to be a consensus that spraying your red mangroves is good for them, but why is that? First let's look at how mangroves deal with salt, because salt is bad for any plant-it's just mangrove have found a way to deal with it and thrive in that environment. There are two ways that mangroves deal with salt water-don't let it in in the first place or allow it to pass through but kick it out and let the rain deal with it.
**************
*
The picture above is a Red mangrove leaf off one of my mangroves and if you notice or have a mangrove in your tank it's a very waxy stiff type of leaf. The reason for this is to limit the water loss and the leaf is where a lot of fresh water is stored. Reds are able to close their pores off to limit water vapor loss during photosynthesis. They are also able to point there leaves directly at the sun to avoid the harsh tropical sun if it gets too intense. The main way Reds deal with salt water is to prevent the salt from entering from the roots via there spongy suberin(waxy material related to cork)roots.
*
*
These roots prevent 95%ish of saline water from entering and the extra salt is stored throughout the tree. There seems to be conflicting theories on this, as some say it's stored in the leaves then the leaf is dropped, but other stories say those leaves dropped have the same saline % as normal green leaves. Not being a scientist myself I'll say whatever floats your boat.* So the main reason to spray the leaves down is to help red mangrove fresh water loss and help clear the pores of dust as red mangrove do not extrude salt through their leaves. This also simulates there natural environment getting rained on all the time-I find that this should be done a few times a week( I usually do 1-2 times with RO water as RODI water seems to be too pure and can have a negative effect long term. This is just my observation so you'll probably be fine with RODI.
*
(Not my pic)
*
Now Black mangroves(above) is a very different story-mostly. As you see above black mangroves take in saline water, but the main difference is they expel it out there leaves and let the rain wash it away (white mangroves do this slightly differently but gonna lump them in here too). They have a different growing style but have many of the same aspects. Normal you find black mangroves more inland as they have the more typical trunk like your everyday tree but you can find them mixed in with red's. The main reason you find them more inland is there roots grow underground, but due to the fact that they grow in the same ground as reds that's hypoxic (no 0²) they grow pneumatophores. Pneumatophores are roots that grow above ground straight up and take in 0² (via lenticels). So it's imperative you spray black mangrove leaves completely, as the salt will build up on the leaves if grown is a marine environment.
*
*
What this looks like, if you want them in your aquarium, is to some get sort of container or aquarium and have the water lvl just below the growing medium (sand, mud or the like), and place the seeds on the sand and wait. Make sure the top of the sand is moist as this will trigger growth. Here's the tricky part. There are two main factors to getting you black mangrove to grow pneumatophores.
*
Time which is simple-Just wait. Mine started to form them just after the one year mark.
*
You need to create a hypoxic environment to force the black mangroves to need 0². I did this by growing them in highly organic mud/loam-about 4" deep. I have also seen growing them a couple inches underwater in gravel and they would put out pneumatophores-but I have not tested this and it was done in fresh water (which I'll touch on this in a second)
*
The seeds are in the little Tupperware just above the water line-sorry old pic from last tank