Ground cover - Dallas Ft Worth Aquatic Plant Club DFWAPC

supersmirky · 10-22-2008, 12:32 PM

I am looking for a low growing ground cover for my aquarium. Anyone know what kind is best also where I can get some or where I might find it?

JAXON777 · 10-22-2008, 12:56 PM

Whats best depends on your lighting, CO2, etc... If you have a hight tech tank with tons of light you can grow anything (HC,HM,Glosso) use the plant finder on this forum for some suggestions.

supersmirky · 10-22-2008, 01:08 PM

I am working with 1 bps of Co2, 6x96w PC lighting over a 130g. I just wanted something low to the ground that worked best for most members. I've seen some people have problems with Glosso.

JAXON777 · 10-22-2008, 03:10 PM

i have 2.6 wpg over my 100 gallon and grew glosso just fine (it got algae b/c no shrimps to clean it) With the amount of light and assuming your are dosing the tank my guess would be you could grow what you want to. I have done HM and Glosso with success but not any good with HC.

gravy9 · 10-22-2008, 03:15 PM

With the amount of light you have, Glosso should do very well for you.

supersmirky · 10-22-2008, 05:13 PM

Ok, thanks guys! Now, do any of you know any good sources of where to find it?

stuckintexas · 10-22-2008, 06:05 PM

maybe put in a WTB thread in the trade/sale forum.

MacFan · 10-27-2008, 11:04 AM

I imagine you're going to need more CO2 with that much lighting. Especially if you have a good plant load and are fertilizing. I recommend EI, I just switched to it from PMDD and the benefits are amazing.

So far, it looks like my baby tears might be growing successfully for the first time. In the past I've grown micro-chain sword successfully, but it was a pain to deal with. It grew up into areas I didn't want it and pulling any of it up would result in far more being pulled out than you want. I'm sure that is somewhat gravel dependent though. Right now that tank has a wonderful mass of blyxa japonica as ground cover. It has grown so dense I'm about to thin it out and transfer some to my other tanks. I just got some glosso for my 12g nano but it's in the acclimation stage still so it looks pretty bad. Hopefully it will recover. There should be plenty of light for it in that tank. I have HC growing in my bog, but I've never successfully grown it immersed. I have some new ideas for that though, so we'll see.

Michael

supersmirky · 10-27-2008, 11:48 AM

Cool...thanks for the input. I will have to see what the EI method is and learn from there. I just found out about PMDD and then started reading about other methods. Once I can understand what I am reading, I might try that method as it seems to vary very differently to the PMDD where as PMDD has all elements mixed together vs the trace seperate.

stuckintexas · 10-27-2008, 01:30 PM

smirky,

the EI method is easy and straight forward. i say go for it and buy the dry ferts from aquariumfertilizer.com. i dose kno3 (just a little because my nitrates seem steady due to my fish and food wastes), k2so4 for extra potassium, k2pho4 for phosphate, csm+b for traces, a little epsom salt after a water change because i dont think there is much magnesium in my city water, and also add a bit of calcium chloride because my water supply is a tad low. its all just an estimation and just watch the plants.

did you up your co2 bubble rate yet?

and also dose extra iron via seachem flourish iron. btw, did you take any pics since putting all of those new plants in?