Beauties from the bulb - Nymphaea lotus - Tiger lotus plants

A - in our opinion absolutely unjustly - not quite so frequently encountered plant in the aquarium is the green or the red tiger lotus Nymphaea lotus "green" and Nymphaea lotus "red". The tiger lotus is a very attractive, not particularly demanding plant, which with its rather large, interestingly patterned leaves is a really good complement to more filigree green or even red plants. Especially with the red color form, beautiful red accents can be set in predominantly green planted aquariums, which are accentuated even better by the broad, fan-shaped leaves.

Supplied is a dark brown small tuber without roots and without leaves. The tubers are not potted. By themselves they look quite unspectacular, but once planted in the aquarium, they sprout very beautiful green or red short stemmed leaves with a brown-reddish mottled, piebald or dotted pattern, depending on the color variation, which in a short time grow into a beautiful visual focal point in the plant aquarium.

The tuber is planted with the pointed side up. Possibly here are already light red to pink small pointed shoots to see. These will later develop into leaves. The tuber should not be completely covered with substrate, otherwise it could rot, about a third should still stick out of the substrate. If you find absolutely no side that could be on top, you can simply place the tuber in a small depression in the gravel, sand or soil. When the roots sprout and anchor themselves in the substrate, it will automatically rotate into the correct position.

Tiger lotus is actually a water lily, and in addition to underwater leaves, it also sprouts floating leaves with long stems after some time. In an open-top aquarium, the tiger lotus may even come into bloom, which can be purple, pink or white, depending on the species, and usually has a light to medium yellow center.

The floating leaves provide shade and protection for inhabitants that don't like it so bright, and in larger aquariums they provide a base for their foam nests for labyrinth fish such as fighting fish, for example. Surface-oriented offspring of guppies, for example, also find shelter under these floating leaves. Shrimps like to use the large leaves as perching areas below the water surface and graze the scum from the leaves or fish for food particles floating above.

If you don't want floating leaves in your aquarium, you can consistently cut back the tiger lotus and remove them. This way you then only have the submerged form, which grows about 20 to 25 cm tall and thus looks optimal in larger tanks in the middle ground and in nano aquariums in the background. Its relatively broad leaves on slender petioles contrast nicely with fine or narrow-leaved plants.

Tiger lotus is also a very suitable plant for the shrimp aquarium. It does not need a particularly deep substrate, yet gets a well-branched root system and grows very well. It absorbs many nutrients and thus reduces the organic load of the water. Nevertheless, green tiger lotus is relatively undemanding - it does not need particularly strong light and also does not necessarily need additional CO2 fertilization. For red tiger lotus to color really intensely, it needs a bit more light than the green variety, but even this color form is not very demanding. The plants are very vigorous, but tolerate pruning really well and can be kept small so well.