Najas indica

Care at a glance

Overview

One of the easiest plants in the hobby, kept the same way as its relative guppy grass: leave it floating as a loose mass or push stem bundles loosely into the substrate. It feeds from the water column, grows fast without CO2, and is popular in breeding and shrimp tanks because fry disappear safely into the tangle. The stems snap at a touch, and every fragment keeps growing, so expect it to spread around the tank rather than stay where you put it. In a lean tank it doubles as a nutrient sponge; in a rich one it can shade everything below, so thin the mass by the handful. Do not let trimmings reach the outdoors.

In the wild

Found across tropical and subtropical Asia, from India through Southeast Asia into East Asia, in still and slow-moving water such as ponds, ditches, canals and rice paddies. It lives entirely underwater as a rootless-looking tangle of brittle stems and cannot grow emersed. Populations behave as annuals in seasonal waters, regrowing from seed and fragments.

Good to know

A waternymph now placed in the family Hydrocharitaceae, after the old family Najadaceae was folded in. The stems are slender and brittle with narrow, finely toothed leaves in apparent whorls. It was once treated as a variety of the very similar Najas minor, the brittle naiad, and the two are still easily confused, but current floras keep them as separate species.

Did you know

The brittleness is not a flaw but the plant's propagation strategy: stems shatter into fragments when disturbed, and each fragment grows into a new plant, which is how a single bunch quietly fills a tank.

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