Aquatic plants and dishsoap...

[greenthumbnails]

Does anyone know why dishsoap burns the leaves of aquatic plants?  I haven't tried it on all the types of plants as I don't have that many, but I noticed that it does it to lotus leaves and possibly taro leaves. 

[Sunbeam56]

Prevents oxygen exchange. 

[bunny56lbc]

Whatever you do , Don't put it on you're lotus pads....
I did last year & it burned them up Big time! They came out of it in a few weeks
when they through up new pads.

bonnie

[greenthumbnails]

Unfortunately I already burned (suffocated) them...all 3 of them... :'(  I was experimenting with Neem oil mixed with dishsoap (as per instructions on the bottle).  At first I thought that I scorched them with the oil, but after reading a previous post which didn't involve any oil only dishsoap, now I think it was the dishsoap.  My victim in the worst shape was a lotus tuber newly aquired and not yet established.  It had only a few starter leaves (the kind that float). This happened a few weeks ago.  My established lotus is recovering but my two new lotus tubers are not doing so good.  One has no new growth or leaves of any kind. The other has miniscule leaves that are growing very slowly and weakened such that it is giving in to some mold problem.  I am afraid to remove the tiny leaves as they are all its got on that one.