Java Fern

I bought the first live thing for the fish tank - which isn't even ready yet! The intention today was to take a look at some LED lightings and it ended up me lugging home 3 blocks of Java Fern and $20 worth of driftwood.


The only reason why I bought the java fern despite the tank not being ready is that this variety of java fern is hard to come by. What I commonly find are the small ones in which the leaves are 20cm long at most. This one is about twice the size at 40cm. If you notice in the picture above, these large ones tend to have split leaves as well. I'm not too sure what this variety is in particular but it could be microsorum pteropus 'phillipine'. Nonetheless, I wanted to reserve the pieces considering how popular it was but the owner couldn't promise that someone else might not pick it up. It's a big farm and not all transactions go through him. I hope the java fern survives the week, then again, it's the toughest of all aquarium plants.

This isn't particularly the perfect buy as I was primarily looking for loose java fern that was untied. But at $15 per block, it really isn't too much of a loss if I decide to cut away the fishing line and tie them myself. At present, they'll sit in the bags until the tank arrives to decide whether or not I need to tie them on my own. The trial setup with them in those bags point towards the likelihood of that occurring. At most, it's a trip back to the farm and picking up more driftwood and tying them on my own. Probably another $10 loss perhaps.

In case you are wondering, these plants were picked up from Pasir Ris Farmway 3. The driftwood was from OTF Aquarium Farm while the java fern from the plant farm just a little further down. If ever one is in need of java fern, that's the place to go.