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This is my 55galon edible plant aquarium. I have both submerged edible aquatic plants and emergent edible aquatic plants. The emergent aquatic plants are inside hanging baskets and uh net pots. I have water crust, water celery, um some society garlic that’s growing out, and on the top of the water I have water mimosa, which is floating. And then submerged I have lemon bcopa basil leaf lemon noofilla rice patty herb and mint creeping charlie. So my whole idea behind this uh edible aquarium was to grow interesting edible aquatic plants. um as opposed to like something like a traditional aquaponic system where um traditional food crops are grown. They usually struggle with some kind of nutrient deficiencies or they usually can’t be grown or they probably most of them can’t be grown in continuous um in flooded medium like I have the water crest and the rest of the emerging plants Man, an important part of my system is the uh the fish stocking. I’ve chosen to have only nano fish, which are fish pretty much two inches or below. This is mainly because um as you get bigger fish um a lot of them can feed on the plants and the plant roots. So the first plant I want to talk about is my water crest. So I have a purple variety. Um right now it’s only purple edged. Um, it said on the website that I got it from, it described it as being that it looked more purple on the website, but I’m I’m happy with it. It definitely looks different from a regular water crest. Um, so far it’s doing really good. It’s probably put on an inch of growth since I’ve uh taken it. Um, when I first put it in, I broke it up into two different plants. So, I cut off the bottom of the roots. I split the plant into two so I could uh spread it out in the planter. I also when I did that I cut off most of the uh the leaves of the plant, most of the top growth so I could promote uh new leaves and uh prevent uh a lot of uh uh moisture loss from the leaves because I wasn’t sure if they were coming from a very dry climate. I’m assuming they weren’t. Um, yeah, I wanted to prevent some of that and encourage the new growth. Um, water crust pretty common edible plant. Probably know what it’s about. Uh, spicy greens. You can use the seeds make a mustard. I would like to do that. I don’t know if it will do that just because of the uh I don’t know if it’s going to have the right photo period or if it’s the cold that triggers it. It shouldn’t be because uh I think it can grow into cool tropics too like zone 10 subtropics. Yeah, I’d really like to make mustard. That would be something really cool and interesting to do in an aquarium. Next is the water celery or sometimes called Javan water drop. Um, it’s a very widespread plant. It grows from I believe Japan um into like tropical Southeast Asia, like full tropical Southeast Asia. Um I’ve had it before. Um I haven’t tried the plants that I just got because they’re obviously new. I don’t know if they’ve been treated with anything or anything like that. Um, I did the same thing that I did with the uh the water crest. Um, I I cut it in half. Um, the roots and then I I actually didn’t cut the top back as much as I probably should have. I should have taken a couple inches off the top just so it could uh put out like fresh new shoots and stuff. Um I feel like it uh a lot of the leaves that I left on it um just ended up yellowing and I removed them now to the new growth. Um, but it’s pretty much you’re just using the leaves and the stems. Um, usually like celery. Um, I think some people or some sources called it water parsley or just anything in that area of uses. probably like soups and salads and and has garnishes and stuff like that. Um, definitely a good one. Grows in the cold and then it also grows in the tropics. So, it might flower. Uh, it’d be interesting if it flowered. I’m not sure if you can use the seeds, but I assume that you could, but I’d have to do more research on that. And this is a strictly uh emergent plant along with the uh the water crest. Um they don’t they don’t grow uh submerged. A lot of my all of my submerged plants um can grow as an emergent as emergent plants um out of the water. Um but not I don’t have them uh vice versa. Um so I could take all my submerged plants and plant them in the planters and they would eventually grow. They’d have to change their leaf structure first though because they lose a lot of moisture as they have them structured. Now, next is uh society garlic. Um society garlic is actually very interesting. Um it can it’s drought tolerant like a good amount of drought tolerant so you can grow it in an actual like landscaping and then you can also grow it as a an emergent plant in water um in continuous water which is really interesting. It’s related to onions and garlic. Um, but it’s not in the same genus um as a lot of the uh onions and stuff like that. Um, it doesn’t get a not a traditional bulb. I don’t know if the right word would be a ryome is what it is, but it’s just like a big cluster. Um, and but everything else about it you can use as like a garlic, not a garlic, uh, chive. You can eat the flowers. Um, I’ve seen companies selling the flowers as garlic flowers. Um, you can use the tops and that’s probably what I’ll be using it for. Probably try using the tops and also the flowers. My last surface plant is water mimosa. Water mimosa is very interesting. It is a legume. So, it’s in the bean family, but it grows on top of the water. So, it actually grows these little foam um they look like packing peanuts. around the uh stems and um it’s also it reacts to touch sometimes. I think this is mostly well I noticed some insect damage on part of it and I gave it a little squeeze and the plant curls up. I believe it’s also called like water sensitive plant. Um, maybe I believe I’d have to do more research into it, but I believe the leaves and the stems are both edible. Um, I believe they’re cooked in some way in uh parts of Southeast Asia. This is a pretty interesting plant. I feel like it would be good for um for feeding livestock possibly. Usually the plants that humans can eat usually fine for livestock as they have a better digestive system than us for um leafy greens. And so usually if we can eat it, they can eat it even better. Um, I’d be also interested, I need to look into this if it uh can fix nitrogen from the atmosphere to help itself grow. Um, because then it would just be fertilizing itself because that’s what a lot of the beans do. Usually they have the the bacteria forming nodules on the roots. So for my first submerged plant, um I have mint creeping charlie. Mint creeping charlie. Um I’ve had it before. I made a tea out of it. It’s just a nice minty flavor. Sort of like a spearmint. It is probably the fastest growing probably the fastest growing plant in my tank. Uh submerged. I don’t know if I like it as much submerged. I’d be interested to try it. emergent because it it likes to creep a lot and I don’t know if that’s it doesn’t have a very strong stem and so it doesn’t seem to do very well when once it gets to the surface it just kind of goes across the surface and I kind of want stuff to grow through the surface Um, it’s a good plant. Next is lemon bakcopa. This is probably my second fastest growing submerge plant. I really like this plant. I like how it looks. It’s just a It’s a cool It has a cool structure to it. And I like that the leaves are kind of sort of opaque. Is opaque the right word? You can sort of see through them. Um I do like the flavor. Has a It’s like a lime flavor. It’s called lemon bakoba, but it it has a lime flavor. Um, but it’s it’s it’s a really good flavor. Um, I like that it’s it definitely has a stronger stem, but it is it is none of the submerged plants seem to be as fast as the growth I’m getting out of the um emergent plants that I have so far. Maybe the mint creeping charlie. It does grow really fast, but the the lemon wakopa is definitely um quite a bit slower than lemon creeping charlie. Definitely I think it’s faster than the uh the two other submerged plants that I have. Next is the rice patty herb linopil aromatica. Um, this is a Southeast Asian or I’m haven’t got to taste it yet. I’m not sure if it likes the water temperature I’m keeping in my tank, which is I’m just doing room temperature because I rather not have the um the heaters. Uh, I just don’t want to deal with a heater. I don’t want to deal with the humidity caused by heater. Um, I rather just keep everything room temperature uh simple. Um, all my fish are adapted to room temperature. Um, never seem to want to grow through the water, like out of the water. I mean, for some reason, I’m guessing it’s probably the temperature. Um, I probably wouldn’t grow it again in a unheated setup. It might be different if the tank was heated. Yeah, supposedly the uh the next lenofilla I’m going to be talking about u can be a more interesting flavor even though I feel like um well this is just maybe because of the cultural exchange um being like Vietnamese people are more common in the United States that maybe the people that would use this other luminopil a lot. Um, so yeah, the last of the submerged plants is the basil leaf mnofilla. This is the one I’m most interested in, but um I’m thinking at some point I’m going to want to grow it as an emerging plant instead of a submerged plant. Um under the water, it is uh very slow growing. Um, I don’t think you would get any like significant harvest just growing it um under the water submerged. But maybe I don’t know, maybe once the plant gets bigger, it’ll be growing fast enough for the further to be able to uh harvest. Um, it’s supposed to taste it’s supposed to have an anise flavor, kind of like a licoricey flavor. Um, I have not tried it yet. Um, I’ve been waiting for it to grow. It is Yeah, it just hasn’t grown fast enough for me to want to harvest it. It’s also kind of a um definitely a less common plant, so I don’t want to I want to wait until it’s grown um before trying it. Actually almost forgot probably my favorite plant so far. Um doesn’t really fit into either category. Um it’s kind of a some rich plant. Um, but it gets it all its photosynthesis pretty much from the top of the water. Um, because it floats. Um, it’s cape uh pondweed. Um, it uses its leaves like a lily pad would and it floats them on the top of the water. Um, also sends up flowers that they smell amazing. They are. You can smell them from the side of the tank and if you pick them up, they smell I don’t know really how to describe them, but they’re like up there with like a jasmine or a gardinia or plumeriia. Very nice smelling. Um, and that’s actually the part they eat in South Africa where they’re native. They make like a lamb stew with the the flowers. Um they’re supposed to taste like a lemony green bean, which is that is not how they smell. Um they also eat the uh the bulbs, but I don’t see myself eating the bulbs. Um unless I have unless they multiply a lot. Um, I’m not sure if they multiply. They might just drop seeds from the um the flowers after they’re done floating. Um, yeah. So, I mean, I I really like the how the leaf pads, all the leaves float on the water. Um, I’m hoping that it won’t only grow towards the light. Um, so far all the leaves have been on one side. Was kind of hoping that they would grow over the uh the whole left side of the tank. But we’ll see. Maybe once the that area is filled up, um, they’ll start putting leaves behind the uh the older leaves. Yeah. But I’m really interested in this plant. Um, I think it’s not really an aquarium plant, but I think it’s really cool in the setup with an open top. So, right now for maintenance, um, I’ve thought about fertilizing Um, but I really don’t want to over complicate my system and I feel like it would be more complicated than I would want it to be with trying to balance the amount of um, nutrients I’m adding um, versus uh, like what the fish can take or um I think I have enough plants where the algae is not going to be too bad once everything’s um rolling. Um right now all I’m doing is I’m feeding pretty heavy, probably heavier than I maybe should feed the fish. Um, right now I’m using Fuval uh Bug Bites fish food, which is a high quality fish food. Uh, it’s got a lot of good stuff in it. Um, hopefully it’s providing um, well, obviously it’s providing good nutrition to the fish. Um, but hopefully it’s also um some of that nutrients uh is going through the fish and then since I’m kind of overfeeding um there is some fish feed that goes um uneaten um and it’s probably being broken down the same way a fertilizer um would be broken down anyways. And I’m hoping since it’s high quality that the plants will get all they need from that fish food. Doesn’t have any um junk in it like fake dyes and and lower quality ingredients and supposedly ash content is a big thing in fish foods. Um, so hopefully going forward, um, that’ll be my only, um, additive. Um, I wouldn’t mind, um, doing a, uh, a couple different fish foods just to make sure I’m doing like everything. Um, and maybe once I get shrimp again, uh, the shrimp, uh, can eat a allergy wafer. And the algae wafer will provide, uh, different nutrients to the aquarium. So, if you guys have any questions about um the setup, anything that I probably missed, I can explain it in the comments. If you guys have any suggestions or if you have any um if you’re familiar with any like uh personal uh cultural uses or personal experiences with any of the plants I have or if you have new plant suggestions. Um, I’m always excited about learning about new interesting edible aquatic plants. Yeah, any of that stuff. Um, yeah, let me know if the thumbnail was any good. Um, I’m trying to work on the whole process. of uh making videos and uh I wasn’t really happy with how my thumbnail and how my video turned out. Um hopefully this uh on my last video, but hopefully I think this aquarium will be much easier to film. Does not have as bad glare as the uh the 20 gallon long Yeah, thank you for watching. See you later.
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