Creeping Jenny Aquarium Plant – A Comprehensive Guide to Growing
Lysimachia nummularia, commonly referred to as Creeping Jenny is a versatile plant with a variety of uses. The brightly coloured plant, with its trailing growth habit and green to yellowish leaves, finds application in outdoor gardens and in indoor aquariums, offering a unique aesthetic and a lush, natural-feeling environment for fish and other aquarium inhabitants. In this article, we will discuss the use of Creeping Jenny as an aquarium plant, the advantages it offers, and the particulars of planting, maintaining, harvesting, and caring for a healthy and thriving creeping jenny aquarium garden. General Overview of Creeping Jenny Creeping Jenny, Lysimachia nummularia, is a plant that has been used for many purposes.
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With a trailing growth habit and eye-catching green to yellowish leaves, the plant is a perfect choice for landscaping, ornamental indoor plating, borders, or for growing in indoor aquariums. Lysimachia nummularia belongs to the Primulaceae family and is a perennial herb with trailing stems that can reach 8 to 10 inches in length. Its trailing stems and sturtzy leaves, in shades of green to yellowish, stretch along shallow fibrous roots. Creeping Jenny is a native of Asia, Europe, and parts of North Africa and grows wild in mountain areas in the northern hemisphere of the world. The plant is easy to cultivate and care for, making it a popular choice among aquarium plant lovers. Using Creeping Jenny as an Aquarium Plant Trailing plants are known to be the community-minded members of the plant family.
Understanding Creeping Jenny: Origins and Characteristics
Creeping Jenny (Lysimachia nummularia), which is also known as Moneywort, is a perennial that native to Europe and Western Asia. It grows in wet places, so it makes a good candidate for terrariums as well as aquariums. In the wild, you’ll often find it along the edges of streams and in marshes and other moist places, where it spreads fast, covering the ground underneath with its thick carpet.
Ordinarily, you’ll see small circular leaves with shades of bright green to golden yellow depending on the variety and the light conditions. The leaves grow along the stems in pairs, oppositely. Its trailing growth habit makes creeping Jenny good for carpeting the bottom of an aquarium, or spilling over the top of rocks and driftwood.
One of the main features that make Creeping Jenny a good choice for aquarium use is the fact it can grow submerged and emersed; can acclimate and develop normally in water of different levels, growing both fully immersed, and partially out of, or above, the surface of the water. In this way, the plant lends itself to a wide range of aquascaping aims and approaches, unleashing the creative designer’s full rockery of botanical, decorative aquatic options.
Benefits of Adding Creeping Jenny to Your Aquarium
1. Aesthetic Appeal
Creeping Jenny has an attractive bright green colour and its slightly rough textured leaves create a flowing, forest-like background. It has a thick stem, similar to duckweed, that grows in a weaving, running pattern. As an epiphyte – a plant that absorbs nutrients, water and fertilisers through its leaves instead of its roots – Creeping Jenny is perfect for both softening hardscapes and filling up dead areas. Creeping Jenny can be used as a foreground plant to create a soft carpet, or as a background plant to add depth and dimension. It is a great addition to any planted aquarium.
2. Versatility in Aquascaping
Creeping Jenny’s flexible growth habit makes it a versatile plant. It can be trained to grow along the substrate and create a dense carpet-like formation, or left to cascade over the rocks and decorations of an aquarium. Since it is not a space-hungry plant and doesn’t mind growing in densely planted tanks, this species is suitable for aquascapes of different styles. It can be used in extreme minimalist aquarium setups where the plants are sparse in number, but also in lushly planted tanks where it can coexist with other plants that grow along the substrate.
3. Oxygenation and Filtration
Like all aquatic plants, Creeping Jenny plays a beneficial part in an aquarium’s ecosystem by providing extra oxygenation and natural filtration. The plant absorbs carbon dioxide from the water as it creates oxygen via photosynthesis, keeping the water oxygenated for the life. It also acts as a natural filter, taking up excess nutrients in the water which can otherwise lead to algal growth, helping to keep an aquarium healthy.
4. Shelter and Hiding Spots for Aquatic Life
The thick canopy of its Creeping Jenny shields residents of the aquarium from light, which lessens stress, by allowing them to perform more natural behaviours like foraging and breeding.
5. Low Maintenance
Creeping Jenny is relatively low-maintenance and is great for beginners and veteran planted-tank aficionados alike. It’s pretty undemanding and not very light- or nutrient-intensive; it grows well in a range of water parameters, and its quick growth rates allow for fast regrowth following trimming or propagation.
How to Grow Creeping Jenny in an Aquarium
1. Choosing the Right Substrate
Creeping Jenny will grow in, and on, most aspects of a planted tank – this includes and perhaps particularly nutrient-rich aquarium soils. A substrate with good anchorage and a way to supply some nutrients is ideal. If you are using gravel/sand as a substrate, you might add root tabs or a layer of nutrient-rich substrate on the bottom of the main substrate.
2. Lighting Requirements
Creeping Jenny can grow in low-light conditions, but will look best in a moderate to high-lighted tank. It may fade to golden-yellow under vigorous bright light, for an extra dash of colour in your aquarium. Low-light conditions may lead the leaves to become even greener, and its growth to slow. Use an aquarium light rated with between 8-10 hours of light per day, which should replicate a full-spectrum lighting.
3. Water Parameters
With its tolerance for a broad spectrum of water parameters, Creeping Jenny might be a suitable choice for tropical, cool-water or even brackish aquariums. Although Creeping Jenny prefers temperatures between 65°F and 75°F (18°C to 24°C), it will survive at temperatures lower or higher than these preferred ranges. This plant prefers slightly acidic to neutral water, at a pH of 6.0 to 7.5.
4. Planting and Propagation
Creeping Jenny can be planted directly into the substrate in your aquarium, or up on rocks or driftwood, using fishing line or aquarium-safe plant glue. Plant this floating plant in the substrate (again, bury the roots to keep it from drifting away). As it grows, runners will spread out in a fanning, horizontal fashion. This is how Creeping Jenny reproduces.
It is however appropriate. Creeping Jenny is also reproduced simply by cutting the stems. Find a long stem with several leaves, and clip it off the ivy completely. Then replant that clipping in the substrate. Within weeks, the cutting will have roots and grown to a new plant.
5. Maintenance and Trimming
This plant grows fairly quickly and may already be taking over your aquarium stems regularly if you want to keep the number of leaves down. Trim the stems to achieve the desired shape and size, and to make the creeping jenny bushier, which will make it effectively denser and even more beautiful.
In the case of plants that grow too thick, or due to space constraints, you can thin it out by pulling some of the stems or runners. This often helps with water circulation and light penetration, too, so all the plants get an even distribution of light and nutrients.
6. Dealing with Common Issues
Although the plant is considered hardy, Creeping Jenny may sometimes exhibit yellowing leaves and stunted growth or may even show algae in the tank, caused by nutrient deficiency, poor water quality or lighting problems.
Yellow leaves? If your Creeping Jenny’s leaves start to yellow, they simply might not be getting enough nutrients – specifically, iron. Turn them bright green again by adding an iron supplement (a liquid fertiliser is a good option).
Dwarfing: If your Creeping Jenny isn’t growing well in your aquascape, double check your aquarium lighting and nutrient regimes. Low lighting and nutrient levels can stunt the growth of your plants and also affect the colouring of the tabs for your plants or liquid fertilisers can improve growth.
Creeping Jenny can also encounter algae issues, and like most aquatic plants, it will thrive if there is high amount of nutrients. Maintain its health by keeping the tap water in aquariums within a useful range and by changing all the aquarium water in regular intervals. Another preventive step includes careful fish feeding to make sure that all the food is eaten before any decay starts. If algae still takes hold and overpowers the tank then incorporating an algae-eating fish or invertebrate is key.