Vickie H.

I am trying to grow Victoria Cruzian water lily. I got the seeds sprouted from someone. I now have 1 floating leaf. It is not easy to grow these water lilies from seed. They seem to do fine and then at a certain stage they die. My fingers are crossed here.

Bananaman88

We used to grow these every year at the Missouri Botnical Garden. They are from South America and need really warm water temps.

Vickie H.

Bananaman they are in a heated tub outside. They have baby fish in the water and an aquarium filter going. I have a window over the tub at night or when it rains. I have the pot just above the water so baby fish cannot swim into the pot. I put new water in the pot every day so it does not get stagnant. I have nothing to feed them like the cocktail some talk about. I am on my own here. LOL Fingers crossed. What did you feed them? I am hoping the fish in the water feed these 2 plants.

Vickie H.

Bananaman88

They were given some sort of plant tabs for aquatic plants. I could check with one of my contacts at MBG to find out just what. I was going to suggest that maybe your water was possibly too alkaline, but I don't think we did anything special to make our water acidic.

Vickie H.

I think I tested it and it was okay. But it is hard water. I need to retest. I have pond tabs. I hoped the fish would fertilize them.

Bananaman88

How big of a container do you have them in when they start to die? It's possible that they could be underpotted, I guess. Here is a link I was recently sent by one of my former co-workers at MBG that might be useful to you: MBG: Victoria Lilies: Growth

Vickie H.

They have not started to die yet. I have read that if they live past a certain size you are okay. But before that, say like up untill the 4th leaf it is very tricky that they will live. They are potted in a small pot until I know they will make it then I will put them in a bigger pot. Thanks for the link.

Bananaman88

You are welcome! I hope it helps.

Vickie H.

The 3 rd leaves on cruziana are now coming up. Yahoo, fingers still crossed. Now my euryale ferox baby plants have popped up this year in one of my ponds. So far so good.

Tog Tan

Hi Vickie,
These are some of my favs and I had a whole bunch of 4-5 leaves juvies in a small pond in my garden. They were all growing very well until I had the idea of making the pond more interesting by putting some fresh water crabs in them. Within a couple of weeks I had the leaves all floating up and they all eventually died. The culprits were the crabs(or me for putting them in)!
One of my friends took one earlier from me and grew it in a big pond at his nursery and it got big to at least 6ft diameter leaves and it died being damaged by crabs.

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Tog Tan has sadly suddenly passed away 6/16/09. We will miss you Tog Tan.

Vickie H.

I am out of town right now. I am hoping my victoria is okay. When I left 4 days ago it was okay.