I tossed some small elephant ears, probably Colocasia esculentum, into a 100 gallon stock tank a year or two ago after I dug them out of a pond I was removing. This tank serves as a rescue location for plants like this, but it's also my primary source tank for duckweed. After some rearranging last winter it ended up obscured by a large topoff reservoir that feeds all of the aquaponic and fish-rearing systems in that greenhouse. I didn't seed duckweed into anything this year, so it was a bit of shock when I finally noticed today that the elephant ears were now eight feet tall, and presumably still growing loose in the water in there.



It's clear to me I've been growing this plant wrong all these years.

That tank does get topped up with water from the fish tanks, helping it receive nutrients, but I kind of expected that these plants wouldn't thrive without some substrate. I'm going to have to dig into there (which is messy with all of the duckweed, and in tight quarters) to see what's going on with them, but I suspect there's a giant root mat in the the bottom now.

Yeah, those are an invasive species here and are on the noxious weed list. They invade waterways and cause all sorts of problems (along with Xanthasona saggitifolia). They can get pretty huge in places where there is also animal life to provide 'natural' fertilizer LOL

I agree, it looks like your tanks are the perfect environment for Elephant Ear (Colocasia esculenta)

As Gina mentioned, C. esculenta and Arrow Leaf Elephant's Ear (Xanthosoma sagittifolium) are both aggressive water lovers! They grow along lakes and riverbanks here in Florida and are listed as a Category I non-native invasive species.