Sea Purslane as the ultimate reef filter plant?

[Theokie]

My sea purslane safely arrived from Florida on Monday. I have positioned it in various spots in my refugiums as they all have different lighting and flow. The bulk is sitting on eggcrate with the root nodes sitting in the water. Though I also tried having some float on a piece of foam above one of my powerhead shrouds.

The tips are a bit crispy on a few from traveling for a week to get here, but I can already see new growth on the green leaves as well as very fine root formation on the portion submerged.

Once my cuttings are more established and I can see if there is a preference as to lighting (I have them under, LED, Metal Hailide, T5 and HPS) I will build a dedicated filter area for mass cultivation to see if it will give the spinning ball of cheato a run for its money on nutrient capture. I'm leaning towards a shallow raceway design with maybe 2-3 inches of water with eggcrate above to hold the emergent growth, with a moderate flow through. I have also considered doing a sand bed where the upper level of the sand is only damp, to more closely mimic the natural growth habits, though this setup would severely restrict flow thru.

After spending most of my youth with large cichlid tanks, being filtered by pothos and spider plant, I'm really looking forward to finding an emergent plant that could potentially uptake nutrients faster then macros.

 

[laga77]

Got t mine earlier this week. After trimming, I would up with 4 sprigs. Two are in a specimen box filled with gravel hanging in one fuge, and two I placed on top of the floating wad of cheato. All are doing good and show signs of growth all ready.

 

[shifty51008]

Any updates from people useing this?

 

[Theokie]

Any updates from people useing this?

I've only had mine 1.5 weeks, so no chemistry changes, but I can say in my setup in seems to prefer medium and indirect lighting. Though this may change once it gets a good root system established. The plants that I put under higher light, in my mangrove area, grew a bit and then dried up into a crisp, pretty much showing the limited roots couldn't keep up with the moisture demands of the new growth.

Now the ones in medium and even indirect light are putting out new shoots and starting to get fuzzy roots from the nodes on the stalks.

Since I started with "cuttings," in order to get them thru customs, I'm sure it will take a few more weeks to really get a healthy root system and then start growing.

Vegetative filtration can't be rushed, but so far this plant does appear to adapt to our closed ecosystems, I'm thinking in the long run I may duplicate one of the referenced studies and grow mine on Styrofoam rafts above my cryptic zone, on maybe floating in my coast to coast overflow.

 

[MadReefist]

My hang on conversion refugium setup are doing **** poor so far. They had tons of root-stems initially; the chamber was stuft.

Main problem I'm sure is inadequate lighting, although during my initial-month new-tank startup/configuration-trials run there have been some period the filter wasn't running, etc, that hasn't helped.

My little 3W LED clip on AQUARIUM lamp (white & blue)...while the design of the fixture was like a wet dream for my particular 'mini' system design, in practice for the purslane its more like a bad joke. I did manage to find a 'proper' grow light in Amazon in the same fixture (includes red LED's) but I guess its coming direct from China as it isnt here yet. 2 lamps might be enough, assuming I manage to swap some red LED's into the aquarium lamp.

I suspect a 20W grow LED lamp (I found a bunch of options in these 'proper' looking rectangular housings) is what I should really have, but for my setup (the system design + its location) the clip on is about all I can hope to work with. If I had an under tank sump refugium this would be a snap; I wouldn't have even sought out the clip-on light FAIL to begin with.

Expect Sea Purslane wants lots of light as they exist in about as FULL SUN a location as you could ever hope for on this planet. At the beach dunes edge there is no shade except for clouds. Plus the sand surely reflects light as well.

 

[laga77]

Had mine for a couple of weeks so far. The one set in gravel hanging in the fuge is growing slowly. I moved my lighting so it will get more to see what happens. The other piece that I had sitting on top of a large ball of cheato had more leaves, but no roots. I moved it into a setup like the first. They appear to be hardy plants. We need to figure how to grow them in our applications a little better. Madreefist, I think you are right. They will need good lighting.

 

[Chibils]

Thanks for the updates, following closely.

 

[Theokie]

The few sprigs that got roots established before the clippings went crispy are doing well, so well in fact that I have been able to increase the light level on several of them, one sprig is even trying to grow towards my 400W radium.

Based on this I'm starting to think about building a dedicated filter area, giving them more space and higher illumination then they would get living under my mangroves.

I'm leaning towards using a piece of vinyl rain gutter, and using eggcrate to keep the plants just slightly above water level. I've considered using Hydroton or Similar media but I'm thinking this will just become a detritus trap, as eventually the roots themselves will be a very effective filter, as I have one spring that has put out about 4" of roots and growing like crazy. Since this is a dedicated filtration setup, my lighting will most likely be red and blue leds with some warm whites just to make it a bit easier on the eyes.

This will not be a quick build as I'm being very careful with my cuttings, as we just had our first frost last night, so I likely would not be able to get new cuttings until next spring, as these I received a month ago were in rough shape after a week in the mail, without having to worry about low temperatures.

I can't wait to get enough plant mass to hopefully have an effect on water quality, takes me back to my days of cichlid tanks with pothos and arrowhead overflowing from the top

 

[Xtc_link]

any update

 

[MadReefist]

Now that my mini hang on refugium has been running right without interruption (draining & drying) for a few weeks they are proving new growth. Even still with just this 3W white+blue LED lamp. Still waiting on the new lamp with red LED's... Some of the mangroves in my other modded hang on unit are showing proper true leaf shoots as well (with just the same lamp type). Should order another +red unit for them too...

One new Purslane shoot tip growth I noticed yesterday seemed to emerge from under the water level (even though the leaves aren't exactly designed for total submersion). It's been lifted up and out now.

Little hairy roots are noticeable in there. If the device goes off it drains back (which happened before and stunted growth) so I need to do something about that. Point is its not entirely unfeasible even with such a feeble lamp, so am expecting goodness when I double down the lumens with added red.

Of course this growth pales to the specimens I have outside in nearly full sun (in mostly cocopeat 'soil'). The skimmate / water change juice gets poured into them out there.

Note I still haven't added any fish in there, so new bioload isn't all that (to help nourish the plants), although a month ago I added 50+ hermits, 50+ snails, bunch of young mushrooms, etc. Likewise I added early on copepods/amphipods and the amphipods are EVERYWHERE in there. Like shoulder to shoulder on every surface. So I have been adding a tiny pinch of food every couple days. It's beyond ready for fish so the plants should go nuts when I drop some in and proper +nutrients importation (feeding) commences.

 

[Xtc_link]

Awesome! What lamp are you looking at getting? I've narrowed down a few but they still don't cover 770nm. At least the ones I looked at. I'm thinking about changing a few diodes on a flea bay led fixture but that's a lot of light for a little area. Currently running cfl on my fuge, no purslane just chaeto and halimedea

 

[laga77]

I added another 100W 6500K CFL to both refugiums. The cheato is loving it. The Purslane is growing but not too fast.

 

[karimwassef]

Any update on this?

 

[Chibils]

Also interested. This has a lot of promise and a saltwater riparium is on my tank bucket list.

Sent from my VS985 4G using Tapatalk

 

[karimwassef]

I recommend adding glasswort to the list in the riparium

 

[Theokie]

my purslane is growing but not too quickly... I lost the bulk of it early on as I don't think I was giving it enough light... now that its about about 6" away from T5HO grow bulbs it is growing, but I imagine my Ulva Lacta and Cheato are out competing it

 

[karimwassef]

Got pics?