Why do the "friend's" plants recover better?

I am an old aquarium hobbyist, and I have lived through the time when the Internet was not even a dream!

Aquarium hobbyists had to rely on the shopkeeper (sometimes, it was the same store that sold both hunting and fishing gear!), and buy very expensive books or borrow them from the town library.

It was therefore impossible to obtain most species of fish or plants that were a bit less common than the guppy or the angelfish!

 

 

The suppliers, besides the shopkeeper whose advice was often questionable, were very often friends. We would go for a snack after school at a friend's house, spend a good hour together looking at their aquarium, dreaming of all we did not have, and searching for what they could provide us that we did not have.

Often, we would leave with a few stems of plants that we had found especially lush in their aquarium, and which they therefore had in quantity.

 

 

What we noticed was that those plants, the "friend's" plants, generally recovered much better than those from the shopkeeper, which often languished and disappeared over time. Those never lived up to the promises of the photos in the book or the shopkeeper’s poster!

 

Since then, I have always been struck by this.

Ah! That Java moss from my friend Olivier, and those cryptocorynes from my buddy Pierre!

 

The explanation, I have only been discovering for about ten years now, with clues offered by very recent agricultural advances.

Trained as an agricultural engineer, I closely follow current discoveries concerning the microbiome (the "rhizosphere") of plants.

Some conifers that settlers brought from Europe to America to produce wood did not grow there and died quickly. But when these same settlers brought, along with the seedlings, some of their native soil in sufficient quantity to remain "alive" and moist, everything changed! Because the microorganisms necessary for that tree species did not exist in America, and the trees therefore did not grow.

My aquarium experience shows me that aquatic plants undergo similar phenomena — somewhat like Rotala indica or Sagittaria subulata, which retain their vitality better when they keep their original substrate.

The plant from the shopkeeper of my youth, grown in Holland, uprooted and washed, transported from the wholesaler to the store, no longer had its beloved microbiome. The shock at replanting was huge, and it rarely overcame it.

Likewise when it was grown "in vitro". This laboratory culture technique aims to avoid any algae, any contamination. But it precisely ignores that a plant grows, once out of the lab, among microorganisms and thanks to them. Life in the lab has not taught it to live with them.

 

The plants from my friends, on the other hand, only had to cross the street in an old mustard jar with some of their sand and water! This also explains why some rooted aquatic plants or even some well-chosen floating plants adapt much better to their new environment.

Since the creation of Aquazolla, I visually inspect plants in the light (to remove any possible foreign bodies), but I forbid myself from washing them, and even more from "disinfecting" them. That would deprive them of the millions of friendly bacteria that have allowed them to grow so well, present on the roots but also on the entire surface of the leaves.

 

Life is beautiful, it is complex, and wanting to make it too simple does it no favor!

To go further, also discover the magical power of plants and the essential role of oxygenating plants like Hornwort in aquatic ecosystems.