my very favorite plants. They do well in light, but can get along and even grow with light levels less than what many other plants would tolerate. There are a couple of horticultural forms around. The Windelov form is showing up at club auctions more and more.
There are also a couple of different leaf forms among the wild forms too. This shouldn't be a surprise in that the genus Microsorium actually contains a small number of species. Google image searches will probably show you what I mean.
Just place them in the tank. Most people would recommend just setting it in a tank and letting those little dark rootlets take hold.
If you want to get fancy, you can loosely rubber band the rhizome to a piece of driftood or a rock. The rhizome is that substantial part of the plant which the leaves connect to. In a month or so those little rootlets growing from the rhyzome will have grabbed onto the rock or driftwood and you can use a comparatively clean pair of scissors to cut off the rubber band(s).
Those are very attractive attached to such an object. I have a piece of driftwood completely lined with the narrow leaved form of Java fern. There may be another such branch of Java ferns in my living room tank known as "The Green Heck."
A plant importer mentioned to me that Java ferns often grow attached to logs near water. In the rainy/flood season they may be completely submerged.
As true ferns, they will develop spores when grown out of water. Spores are formed only on the emersed(air and wet soil grown) plant (though the ferns can be kept in wet plastic bags a long time) and spores are serious work to culture, However they will reproduce vegetatively in the water - little plants will grow off of the big ones.
Given opportunity (some light, minimal water movement, occasional water changes) they can grow pretty big. Legendary Chicagoland aquarist George Maier gave me my first two Java ferns. In a year or two one completely filled up a ten gallon tank, the other a 20 gallon tank!
By the way, they will even tolerate some salt in the tank. I find that amazing in that true ferns and salt usually don't go well together.
As my job seasonally got very intense, the fish tanks would suffer neglect. (To wit: I terribly neglected water changes.) The two ferns, named Frick and Frack by a buddy of mine, reacted very differently. Frick just up and died - from lack of nutrients? Funky water in it's new 20?
Frack reacted differently in it's old 20. It fell apart/ morphed into dozens, maybe a hundred or more little Java ferns. Many of those "Fracklings" found their way all over the southern suburbs of Chicagoland.
They make a nice mix with plastic plants too. A plant purist once sniffed, "If I was going to keep plastic plants, I might as well keep plastic fish too."
However plastic plants look so realistic today (ok, not those dreadful purple and hot pink ones) that you can mix and match and keep people guessing as to what you actually have in your tanks ;) Even those big, professional aquariums like Shedd do that once in a while.
All the best!
Uncle
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