Baby Lotus Dying?

I waited a year to start these lotus from seeds and things were going great until I put them in their final outdoor growing container...

All their leaves turn purple and shrivel up, and they started developing foamy bubble spots. I feel like it’s some kind of bacteria but I can’t be sure. Seems like information is hard to find about this on Google.... Maybe I just don’t know what to search for :(

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I want my babies to live!!

Originally I thought maybe it was too much sun, but is that even possible? I thought they loved direct sunlight...

Moving them into the shade seems to stunt their growth, so I moved them back into full sunlight. I tried spraying them with hydrogen peroxide since I was worried about bacteria. This made the foam go away at least, but the leaves stayed purple.

I had seen some sites saying purple leaves are a sign of phosphorus deficiency, but everyone says don't fertilize until after you have aerial leaves. I have fertilizer that I want to use, but I don't want to kill the plant. I don't know if it will be able to even grow aerial leaves if it's suffering from deficiency at this point though...

For now I'm going to see if they continue to grow to the point where they get aerial leaves...

I want to help, but I have some questions.

What size is the planter (dimensions) and the larger container (gallons and dimensions) in which the planter sits? How long have they been in the planter? Or did you plant them directly in the bigger container.

Do you change the water, and if so, how often?

How deep are they planted?

What planting medium did you use? Have you fertilized it at all?

Lotus generally like to be in a large body of water, planted at least 18-20" deep, dappled to full sunlight. You can plant them deeper than their current length; they will grow to the surface in a few days.

I have mine in a 5000 gallon pond, in a container on the middle level shelf, about 20" deep.

After my last pond clean-out (I do every other year), the lotus were inadvertently put on an upper shelf, 10" deep and they absolutely hated it! They turned a pale green with burned leaves--I thought they were going to die! My pond is on the SW side of my yard in Southern CA and it has been very hot. They might do better up where you are because Fremont is cooler.

I have mine in clay soil, but everyone is talking about Special Kitty fragrance free non clumping cat litter as an aquatic planting medium. It's made of 100% bentonite clay, granulated. You can find a 25 pond bag at Walmart for less than $5.

If I were you, I'd put the lotus seedlings all together in a 20" wide pot with the kitty litter/planting medium, and set that pot in a larger deeper pot to 15" deep. Whiskey barrel size is the minimum I'd use for a lotus.

You can set the lotus planter on top of bricks and gradually remove the bricks until the lots is at the desired depth with the leaves are at the surface. Once that happens, your lotus leaves will shoot above the surface. I don't know how long it takes a lotus from seed to flower, it depends on how many leaves, and how much direct sunlight (you need at least 5 hours of direct sun). Also, try not to disturb the lotus as they're growing. They don't like having their tubers messed with.



This message was edited Jul 2, 2021 12:52 AM

It's a 20"x6" tub. I don't have a pond or any other larger container to put it in. Since this is my first time growing any kind of water plant I just planned on keeping them in containers for now.


When they were germinating I changed it multiple times a day, but after transplanting them into the container with the pond soil I've just been refilling the water every 1-2 days as it goes down.

They started smelling horrible, so I started flushing them out every day and even just dumping the water out as much as I could and replacing it with clean water until I was able to get an aerator. The smell went away, but they're covered in a sludge now which I think might be algae...


There's only about an inch of the pond soil in the bottom, they still have their seed husks attached so they kinda keep floating out whenever I bury them.

It's Aquascape Pond Potting Media for Aquatic Plants. I have some fertilizer tabs, and I've been wanting to use them, but everything I read says don't do it until they have aerial leaves. I don't want to hurt them so I've been trying to hold off...


A lot of stuff I read said to put only 2-3 inches of water and that they are very sensitive to water level changes, so I've been keeping it low... I added some more today though. I also have some more soil I'm going to add too.


Wow! Okay that's frustrating because a lot of the articles about raising lotus from seeds kept telling me less water is better because the part of the plant that grows out of the water will be stronger. But my original instinct was that they were getting burned from the sun, so I'll definitely try to get them deeper... Maybe buy a deeper container if I have to. This container was marketed specifically for lotuses too. :(

Thank you for your help!

Assuming you prepare your lotus too early, you might kill the plant. Predictable temperatures are significant when you plant your Lotus Tuber. It is vital that the evenings are reliably something like 50 degrees or hotter, and daytime temps ought to be no less than 65 degrees, or hotter