C. sp. 'Lingga - Red' seeds

When I first received specimens of C. sp. 'Lingga Island' from my friend in Nov 08 last year, there was one specimen which has 2 fruits on it (see below, one is near to my index finger and one is near to my thumb). One melted away after a few weeks while the other slowly grew and finally opened up this week.

Unlike in the nature where the fruit will open into a beautiful multi-pointed star shape, the fruit in my humid and warm tank merely opened up at the tip to reveal the seeds inside. As the entire fruit looked as if it was starting to rot, I decided to cut the fruit and throw the fruit together with the seeds into a tupperware of water to attempt to harvest the seeds.

The fruit started to melt and disintegrate away after I started to twirl and stir it in the water revealing the seeds. I slowly removed the seeds from the remnants of the fruit and found out that some of the seeds were rather hard and healthy while others had turned soft and seemed as if they were starting to rot. A total of about 40 healthier seeds were harvested as compared to about 30 rotting seeds and 2 of the 40 seeds have started germinating.

The seeds below are those which had started to melt.

The seeds below are the harder ones with 2 which have already started to geminate.

The remnants of the fruit which had quickly disintegrated away in water.

I separated the healthier seeds into 2 batches and placed them in separate covered tupperwares, one batch is placed on wet ADA Amazonia soil while the other batch is placed on wet ADA Amazonia soil + lapis sand. The unhealthy ones were placed in a separate container with wet tissue as base. Hopefully the healthier seeds will not continue to rot and will start to germinate soon.

I will keep you guys updated of the outcome. As this is the first time I am harvesting the seeds of cryptocoryne and trying to germinate them, any suggestions are most welcomed! Thanks!