Water Lotus Plant

I thought this would be an easy one to grow....

Not so~

Should this pot be in the shade at all?  Should it need watering daily? Am I supposed to do something else with this plant other than putting it in water? Why did it all turn to mush?

Initially, there was only mud at the bottom of the container when I bought it, and put it into this nice flower garden pot on a pedestal.   I placed it under the Bayan tree that is in the front corner of my lot where I created a corner shade garden. 

Even though you can visually see four other plants living and growing around my water lotus, the lotus turned to slime with mostly mud under it and a green carpet of mossy slime on top. 

So when I went to clean it out, I found this growing...
                                                            

   Doesn't look too small here, but when you look at the next  photo of the whole pot, you'll see how tickled I was to see it sprouting out and made me what to save it. 

Look at the details in the following video of the layer of slime (mossy slime) with mud underneath. Way more mud than when I bought the plant to begin with.  In fact, there was only about three inches of mud when I transplanted it into this garden pot. 

The water was kept high, wasn't in bright sunlight all day, yet the leaves and flowers kept wilting, dying off without sprouting new flowers.  I really didn't understand until I bought a new pot of fresh water lotus and kept it in the sun all day.  I really think my trouble with it was being in a shade garden all day long!

I kept the slimy moss and put it in a location that could use the nutrients from it, then slopped the mud around the plants in the shade garden.  They definitely could use some fresh mud nutrients. 

What I found out after buying new top soil into the shade garden was the soil was so poorly made and bagged up that what was left now was nothing but dust.  The poor plants were not getting any kind of nutrients from the topsoil I purchased.  The neighbor (who has wonderful flowers, bushes and trees) explained in very broken English and digging up old dirt that the new topsoil was not the Thai soil these plants were use to.  Aha~  that now made sense as to why my big beautiful purple-flowering bush was struggling to stay alive. 

More to come on that one~