Water Hedge

Didiplis diandra

Fine needle-shaped leaves in crosswise pairs that build soft cloud-like bushes. Olive green in an ordinary tank, orange and red at the tips in a bright one.

Light: medium–high
Difficulty: difficult
Temperature: 4 – 30 °C (39 – 86 °F)

Leaf colour: green, red
Plant type: stem plant
Growth rate: fast
Tolerates light: medium – high
pH: 5 – 7
Carbonate hardness: 2 – 10 °dKH
General hardness: 0 – 30 °dGH
Placement: midground, nano tank +2 midground, nano tank, Dutch street, foreground
Propagation: cuttings
Grows emersed: yes

Appearance

Narrow leaves set in crosses along a thin stem, so the plant looks feathery from any angle. The colour of the growing tips runs from olive through salmon to ruby depending on light and iron.

Keeping

Difficult, and the reason is that it wants everything in balance: good light, soft slightly acidic water, iron and carbon dioxide. Get one of them wrong and the stems go thin and bare from below. In good conditions it grows quickly and branches into a dense bush.

Placement

The front or middle of the tank in a group, where the fine texture can be seen against broad-leaved neighbours. It suits a nano tank as well.

Propagation

By cuttings: cut the top and plant it; the old stem branches below the cut and thickens the group.

Water conditions match

The water suits 841 of 1249 species in the catalogue — these are the ones people look up most often.

Butterflyfish Julii Corydoras Red-finned Parotocinclus Gastromyzon monticola Egg-shaped Goldfish Flame Tetra Gardner's Killifish African Tetra Hypsolebias picturatus Common Zacco Labeo Bicolor Gambusia Flying barb Gastromyzon scitulus Albino Zebra Danio Geophagus Brokopondo Homaloptera bilineata Red-tailed Rasbora Boraras naevus Lampeye Killifish Spotted Raphael Catfish Corydoras melanotaenia Festivum cichlid Pseudomugil paskai

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 Marbled Headstander Pellegrin's Leporinus Leporinus striatus False Black Tetra Common Metynnis Mylossoma duriventre Red Whiptail Catfish 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 Geophagus altifrons Geophagus winemilleri Pearl Cichlid Red-spotted Cichlid Haplochromis philander Red Chromide Jack Dempsey cichlid

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

Scientific and other names, conservation status

Other scientific names: Peplis diandra De Candolle, Ammannia nuttallii, Didiplis diandra aquatica, Didiplis diandra terrestris, Didiplis linearis, Hypobrichia nuttallii, Peplis diandra, Peplis diandra aquatica, Peplis diandra terrestris, Ptilina aquatica
Didiplis diandra: (Nutt. ex DC.) Alph. Wood
Family: Lythraceae