Author Topic: Do snails harm baby water lilies (Read 4240 times)

casey · « **on:** November 16, 2008, 06:08:08 PM »

My attempt at growing a lot of vivps into plants for our watergardener's sale next May seems to be going OK. I have about 100 plantlets growing in 16 oz plastic cups in a 5' kiddie pool. You may recall from my earlier questions that the money we raise is granted to non-profits so that they may put in a water feature for education or meditation.

However, the little tubers that are starting to form are losing their leaves. For awhile everything was growing great and lots of new, little leaves were shooting to the surface. The water is about 80 degrees, kept there by aquarium heaters. They get about 6 hours of sun. There are a lot of snails in the pool with them. Are the snails a bad thing or a good thing?

Also, the lilies are planted in good rich mud with a bit of phosphate and then a top layer of about 1/2 inch of sand. It seems like some of the plant crowns are sinking into the sand/mud. When I planted them I made sure the crown was above the sand. I anchored the plants, even though they did have roots, with curved plastic coated large paper clips. Does anyone know why they would be sinking? Is this bad or not a problem?

Thanks for any advice you can give,
Casey in Tucson, AZ

miguynmkoi · « **Reply #1 on:** November 17, 2008, 01:11:35 PM »

Not a fan of snails in my pond. Last summer, hot!, when I had my lilies growing in a 25 gal container the pads looked more holey than Swiss cheese and totally dotted with the little buggers on top and below. The heat didn't help. But I had thousands of little snails. Had to empty container and remove as many of the snails as I could. Since then I pick off all the snails I can and have not had the problem again. Seemed very weird how this happened.

casey · « **Reply #2 on:** November 17, 2008, 05:19:54 PM »

Ok, and thanks. I had decided I would take out as many snails as I could on the off chance that might be a problem. I also vacuumed, with a syphon tube, much of the sand so that the tops are above the medium again. Guess I'll see what happens now.

Casey

Julles · « **Reply #3 on:** November 18, 2008, 07:58:47 AM »

I don't believe snails are bothering my vips. But mine are beginning to look puny now, too. I'm thinking, even though you have the water heated, could it be the changing amount of sun, because we have shorter days, that even though your water is summer-temperature, the vips still know it's time to go dormant?

turtlemike · « **Reply #4 on:** November 18, 2008, 12:23:49 PM »

HI I'm new to this site mabe I can help with your disapearing lily problem i have a lot of experence in killing baby lilys in tubs . As for snails I dont think they are your problem . I have grown hardy seedlings in tubs with rams horn snails while keeping them under close observation. They generaly do not like to eat lily seedlings. but there are exceptions like if there is nothing else to eat. What generaly happens is that in a confined environment nutrient levels rise which leads to a problem with "melt" or "leaf melt". phosphorus is particulary bad Melt is a dinoflagelate algae which if I remember right has 2 or 3 chloroplasts . I dont know if it is actualy catagorized as a dinoflagelate I just know it has 2 flagelas and looks just like one. This little criter has a free swiming stage and an imobile stage. I dont know everything about it's life cycle but it arives in your tub in water or soil probably and begins to grow on all surfaces of the inside of your tub including tub walls, leaves, and sand grains. wyou can feel it as slime on the sides of your tubs. I'v watched this layer under the micro scope build up on leaf surfaces untill it gets several cell layers deep at which time the waterlily cells start to burst I can see them explode and disapear like stars disapearing from the sky. I figure the melt then feeds on the protoplasm leaving a transparent leaf remaining, which the snails then eat. This looks to the naked eye like the snails are eating the lilys. Then the melt enters it's mobile stage and cells swim off to colonize another area. I think the melt secretes a toxin like red tide, which is a dino flagelate also. If there is no water exchange this toxin builds up in the tub to the point where it will kill all of the snails. by then your plants are all dead. This toxin also reaches very high levels around the little tubers in the sand due to the sand having very high surface area for the melt to grow on and then your little tubers die. So knowing all this the solution is obvious, constant flow of very low nutrient water through your tubs is critical. It keeps nutrient levels low so microscopic grazers and snails can keep ahead of the melt by eating it like cows. Constant flow allso washes out mobile stage melt.. The other main problem is the sand, it's many nooks and crannys provide protection for melt to hide in from grazers this melt feeds on nutrients excaping from the soil below and toxins kill your roots. The sand expandes because the melt is pushing the sand grains farther apart this makes it look like your tubers are being. drawn down into the sand The solution is to plant only in sticky slick fairly low nutrient clay. you will not have cloudy water and seeds will sprout just fine under an eigth inch or more of thick clay just push them into it.. the jury is stil out on snails. If algae gets bad I put ramshorns in to eat it then I remove them so I dont Have to keep an eye on them to make sure they dont eat my plants when they are very young. I hope this covers everything and please tell anybody who might need to know about this "tutorial" on melt because no one seems to under stand what it is and this knowledge could save countless waterlily and victoria seedlings. I hope your head dosn't hurt after all this and I hope it helps a lot. mike giles

Jerry · « **Reply #5 on:** November 18, 2008, 12:52:09 PM »

MIKE! We need a turtle expert! Dear Teresa rarely visits. 2 are better than one!
Welcome

casey · « **Reply #6 on:** November 18, 2008, 09:31:09 PM »

Mike and everyone who made suggestions, thanks.

Wow, mike, do you have some sort of scientific degree? I was so impressed by your explanation and will get the water flowing through there ASAP. I do have bubblers going, for good or bad. I figured they would keep the warm water from collecting in only certain spots. As I wrote, I did clean out most of the snails and the sand. Today I saw growth on some of the little tubers that I don't think was there yesterday when I did the work. Now, my plantlets are not seedlings. They are all from vivips that were started as per Sean's tutorial with the rock weights and the grow lights. When they were planted in the "mud," they had decent leaves and roots so they were definitely tougher than a seedling would be. Interestingly, most of the ones that are doing the worst are from one Panama Pacific plant. The others;from a different panama Pacific, a Tina, a Lindsey Woods and a Queen of Siam, are not suffering much at all even though they too are sinking and in the same kiddie pool as the ones losing their leaves.

Oh the joys and learning of watergardening and lily propagation!

Casey

karen J · « **Reply #7 on:** November 19, 2008, 09:12:25 AM »

turtlemike. That was really interesting! It makes a lot of sense and may explain my own observations in pots/tubs that were not successful.

I have the same question for you as Jerry. Turtles?
If so, then I have many turtle questions for you.

Casey, I dunno, but 6 hours of sun doesn't sound like very much. Maybe it would help to increase that- even double it.

casey · « **Reply #8 on:** November 19, 2008, 04:51:56 PM »

Karen,

I can't double the sun and I don't expect any bloom. The best place I have for them gets winter shade on the north side of the house but the reflected light is good so it is very light shade. This is the worst it will get and it will get better in a couple months. I am keeping the water at about 80 degrees. In early March the sun will get higher in the sky quickly and if the tubers are still viable i am hoping they will take off and be good by mid-May, our plant sale time.

Casey

turtlemike · « **Reply #9 on:** November 20, 2008, 05:48:55 AM »

Hey Jerry, This is turtle mike. I wrote another "tutorial" on turtles and snails and Photoperiodic dormancy response in tropicals and grpwing vivip tubers and snails. It took almost 2 hours to wright it and when I posted it it disapeared and did not show up on your site. What happend? I'd like to help everyone but I dont have time to waste. It would take me another 2 hours to repeat it and I have thousands of lilys to attend to. Is it lost in cyberspace, is it lost on your end. Is there a way to recover it on my computer? I'm VERY new to computers and have only posted a few times before on wgi. Also I have lots of pictures.How do I post pics on your site.the only way I have ever posted pics on wgi is to send them using my picasa progam and email them to the mailing list. And that's all I know how to do on the computer except google things and email and update my anti virus protection. So this post is a test to see if it will work this time. help me please! turtlemike.

Jerry · « **Reply #10 on:** November 20, 2008, 08:27:01 AM »

This is a first for me. I have written letters and lost them for reasons unknown. I am forwarding this to Sean. Sean is our Web Master and a computer whiz. He will know the answer if there is one. My guess is it is a glitch in the computer? I really have no idea. :'( :'(
It is a disheartening experience indeed. We love your posts and hope it was just a fluke.
You WILL get a response from Sean as well as other members who are good at this stuff.

Esther · « **Reply #11 on:** November 20, 2008, 11:36:30 AM »

Oh Mike. It's too bad that your all your information and hard work went up in UM (smoke) cyberspace. I have had that happen too but what I was saying wasn't worth much anyway so it didn't matter. These computers can be a wonderful tool but for those of us that aren't very computer literate, they can be pretty frustrating at times. Anyway, welcome to the Pond and I hope you stick around as there are several members who have turtles or members who would like to have and we have questions from time to time. Who knows, maybe we can even help you out once in a while?

Sean · « **Reply #12 on:** November 20, 2008, 12:56:45 PM »

Unfortunately if it did not post to this forum, it is lost. I would suggest in the future to always save a copy to your own computer first if you are typing a longer article, that is what I do. Save frequently as you are gathering your thoughts.

Cheers,
Sean

turtlemike · « **Reply #13 on:** November 20, 2008, 01:03:47 PM »

Hi Sean. How do I save a copy on my computer I have windows XP I was just about to try again. also how do I post pictures.

Sean · « **Reply #14 on:** November 20, 2008, 01:17:44 PM »

Hi Mike,

I write longer articles in Microsoft Word and when finished, I just copy and paste to the forum.

As for adding pictures, you can see this tutorial http://www.americanponders.com/forum/index.php?topic=1444.0

Cheers,
Sean

turtlemike · « **Reply #15 on:** November 20, 2008, 02:03:23 PM »

HI Sean ,I have more experence in searching my hard drive than I do with word so I followed your tutorial on posting pics . I have no problem finding and highlighting the pictures I want to on my hard drive but my camera is a 12 megapixel camera and it makes giant files 1.8 mb per picture. Another problem is that the way I do my photography is I way under expose and then put the pictures into my picasa program. This picture program has a great feature in that it has a fill light adjustment. This brightens only the dark areas and leaves the properly exposed lily blooms color unchanged. I take all of my pictures with this feature in mind because waterlilies are about all I take pictures of. The point is this,the picture when viewed in picasa is properly adjusted. with fill light and you can clearly see the under exposed leaves but on my hard drive is only the very dark under exposed picture. So I have 2 problems dark pictures and huge files. If however I email my pics by using picasa it automaticaly down sizes the file and includes the fill light adjustments that my photos were taken to match. Is there any way that I can email them to the forum. some of these pictures are ground breaking and a lot of people would like to see them. mike

Sean · « **Reply #16 on:** November 20, 2008, 02:55:40 PM »

Hi Mike,

You could email them to yourself and then save them to your Desktop then attach them to the forum. It will not work the other way around.

I can also suggest a free program called Irfanview that is a picture viewer/editor. You can download it at www.irfanview.com
With Irfanview, you can do the same as picasa but it is all done on your own computer.

Cheers,
Sean

Jonna · « **Reply #17 on:** November 20, 2008, 05:05:59 PM »

There is another way to post pictures using your Picasa gallery.

That was a test from my Halloween party gallery.

Click on the thumbnail of the picture you want to post in your Picaso gallery. When you have the larger picture on the screen, RIGHT click on the picture and select Copy Image Location.

On this forum in your post, click on the Insert Image icon and paste the copied location between the IMG tags. It will show up when you Preview the message if you got it right. One clue, if the location you copy does not end in .jpg then you don't have the right link.

edited to add: the gallery you use for the picture in Picaso MUST BE PUBLIC. Otherwise this won't work.

turtlemike · « **Reply #18 on:** November 21, 2008, 07:44:59 PM »

This is a test pic.

marla · « **Reply #19 on:** November 21, 2008, 08:43:33 PM »

And WOW what a beautiful test picture it is

, what lily is that?

Esther · « **Reply #20 on:** November 22, 2008, 06:26:39 AM »

Alright!!! That is beautiful.

turtlemike · « **Reply #21 on:** November 22, 2008, 06:44:48 AM »

Hi this is one of my seedlings as yet un mamed. ths is stil a test and there will be more to come.

turtlemike · « **Reply #22 on:** November 22, 2008, 07:21:34 AM »

This is a test picture of one of my seedlings as yet un mamed.

turtlemike · « **Reply #23 on:** November 22, 2008, 08:22:25 AM »

Hi everybody this is no longer a test I think I have it figured out, well my sister figured it out for me. I made new folders in my hard drive and put my down sized and picasa fill lighted picture files into them just in order to be able to send them to you. these pictures are acurate color depictions,to my eye, with no enhancements,just fill light to the under exposed leaves. I'll post some before and after fill light comparison pics so you can check it out. I've noticed that the pics I sent so far have looked low resolution on the posts. my sister showed me how to right click on the posted picture-click on "save as" , a new window pops up asking where to save it to. I just click "desktop" and that puts an icon for that picture on the desktop. to view the picture at high resolution and magnification double click on that icon. So now that I kinda know what I'm doing I'll post some more pics of my seedlings. I'll get back to you later about turtles and lily dormancy etc. The flower on top is one of my seedlings with Joey Tomocik and mayla for comparison.

Jerry · « **Reply #24 on:** November 22, 2008, 08:30:09 AM »

Wonderful photos and a pretty neat sister!

turtlemike · « **Reply #25 on:** November 22, 2008, 08:33:26 AM »

Here is another pic of the last plant.

turtlemike · « **Reply #26 on:** November 22, 2008, 08:46:01 AM »

And another of the same plant.

turtlemike · « **Reply #27 on:** November 22, 2008, 08:56:55 AM »

one last one for today, same plant.

Jonna · « **Reply #28 on:** November 22, 2008, 11:03:04 AM »

Gorgeous! Those blooms are HUGE!

Esther · « **Reply #29 on:** November 22, 2008, 04:30:27 PM »

Great pictures of your lilies Mike. Do you have any pictures of your pond and setup? We love pictures. Maybe start a new thread so people won't miss it.