Madagascar Lace Plant

Aponogeton madagascariensis

The plant whose leaves are a skeleton of veins with holes between them — nothing else in an aquarium looks like it. Beautiful and genuinely demanding: clean water and patience are the price.

Light: medium
Difficulty: medium
Height: 20 – 50 cm (7.9 – 20 in)
Temperature: 5 – 33 °C (41 – 91 °F)

Leaf colour: green
Plant type: rosette
Growth rate: fast
CO₂ demand: low
Tolerates light: low – high
Carbonate hardness: 2 – 12 °dKH
Placement: background, midground
Propagation: seeds
Grows emersed: no

Appearance

Long leaves 20–50 cm made of a lattice of veins, dark green and translucent. Forms differ in how wide the leaf and how fine the mesh.

Keeping

The most demanding plant in this catalogue after the dwarf baby tears, and demanding in a different way: it needs clean, frequently changed water and a nutritious substrate more than bright light. Debris settling in the leaf lattice is its usual killer. Plant the bulb so that the growing tip stays at the surface of the substrate. Rest periods with dying leaves are normal.

Placement

A single plant in a large tank, where nothing shades it and the water moves. It is not a plant for a first aquarium.

Propagation

It flowers readily in an aquarium; ripe seeds are sown on the substrate. Bulbs are usually bought rather than divided.

Water conditions match

The water suits 1017 of 1249 species in the catalogue — these are the ones people look up most often.

Swordtail Guppies Cobra Guppy Blood Red Molly Butterflyfish Red Zebra Cichlid Julii Corydoras Red-finned Parotocinclus Gastromyzon monticola Egg-shaped Goldfish Flame Tetra Gardner's Killifish African Tetra Kenyi Cichlid Cuckoo Catfish Golden Swordtail Hypsolebias picturatus Common Zacco Labeo Bicolor Gambusia Flying barb Gastromyzon scitulus Albino Zebra Danio Geophagus Brokopondo Zebra Mbuna

Will eat this plant

These species damage plants, especially when their diet is short of vegetable food.

Bengal Loach Zebra Loach Burmese Border Loach Emperor Botia Spined Loach Marbled Headstander Pellegrin's Leporinus Leporinus striatus False Black Tetra Common Metynnis Mylossoma duriventre Red Whiptail Catfish Molly sphenops Balloon Molly Lyretail Molly Marble Molly Hi-Fin Platy Hawaii Platy Blue Platy Pintail Platy Black Platy Chocolate Molly Moonlight Gourami Melanotaenia parva

Will uproot it

These species dig through the substrate and pull rooted plants out.

Marble Loach Peacock Eel Forktail Loach Guntea Loach Long-nosed Loach Horseface Loach Pearlscale Black Moor Goldfish Shubunkin Painted Pleco Featherfin Synodontis Reddish Mystus Catfish Blue Acara Aulonocara maylandi Aulonocara multicolor Aulonocara Orchid Geophagus altifrons Geophagus winemilleri Pearlscale Cichlid Pearl Cichlid Redbelly Cichlid Red-spotted Cichlid Chuco godmanni Haplochromis philander Red Chromide Jack Dempsey cichlid

Matching water does not mean the fish will leave the plant alone.

The same plant with a different look: light, water and care are shared with the species.

Other varieties: Aponogeton madagascariensis var. madagascariensis, Aponogeton Henkelianus Bulb

Scientific and other names, conservation status

Other scientific names: Aponogeton fenestralis, Aponogeton fenestralis major, Aponogeton guillotii, Aponogeton henkelianus, Aponogeton madagascariensis henkelianus, Aponogeton madagascariensis madagascariensis, Aponogeton madagascariensis major, Hydrogeton fenestralis, Ouvirandra fenestralis, Ouvirandra madagascariensis, Urirandra fenestralis, Urirandra madagascariensis, Uvirandra madagascariensis
Aponogeton madagascariensis: (Mirb.) H. Bruggen
Family: Aponogetonaceae
Conservation status: LC

Madagascar Lace Plant

Tank conditions

Care and keeping