orion2001

Hey everyone,

I just started my experiment with growing a dwarf hairgrass carpet using this method. My setup is pretty much the same as HoppyCalif's current setup for his experiment with emersed Glosso (http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/f...ed-glosso.html)

My tank is a 10 gallon tank with 2*15Watt CFL's (spirals) with not so great reflectors. I'm planning to have lights on for 12 hours during the day.

Substrate: 1/2 inch of diamond black (leonardite) and topped up with 2-3 inches of Flourite Black Sand.

Here is my starting pic:



This was just after planting. The glass has completely fogged up now.

I think I need to replant tomorrow...I probably need to separate the stalks out further. Some of my clumps seem to be too thick. Also I'll probably trim them down to 1/2-1inch height to stimulate growth and to make them send runners out. Does this sound like a good idea?

I'd appreciate any comments/suggestions. If you'll see anything wrong with what I've done, do let me know. Btw, do you think the java fern will be able to grow the way I have it? I made sure not to bury the rhizome.

For ferts I dosed the whole substrate with a mix of Seachem Nitrogen, Phosphorous, Flourish and Excel. Potassium should be here tomorrow so I can dose it then. I'm still waiting for my dry ferts from Rex...till then I can use up my stock of Seachem ferts. I'm also spraying now and then with a dilute mixture of all of the above.

Well wish me luck and I'd love to get some feedback from everyone.

PS- The plants were from my local petsmart so I'm not very hopeful about whether they'll survive. I did make sure to get the newly shipped batch...but some of the stalks had already browned.

hoppycalif

The Plant Finder says Java Fern grows emersed, so that should work fine. It may take some time to convert to emersed foliage, and again to convert to submersed foliage when you flood the tank. I'm not at all sure about that.

I think the substrate is a little too wet. It will dry some in a day or so, so I would not add back enough water to see any on the surface. The problem with even slight amounts of water on the surface is that the light can cause BGA to grow along the substrate/glass boundary, where you won't notice it until you flood the tank.

Given how easy it is to plant on nearly dry substrate I suggest spreading out the hairgrass to as near to single plants as you can. It takes an hour or so per pot to do that, but it is worth the effort. At least they can't float out like they do with submersed plantings. With my glosso, I could have "planted" them by just dropping them on the surface of the substrate. That might also work with hairgrass.

orion2001

Hey Hoppy. Thanks for your comments. I did realise the water was too much. What hapenned was (and you probably experienced this when you set your tank up) that I didn't realise how much the sand would compact and lose height when I poured the water with ferts into the tank. As a result I got an inch too much of water in the tank. Then I had a horrible time syphoning it out...which ended up with me having a mouthful of black sandy water (delicious) .

It's dried out now...I left a little bit of the top open till I got some of the water to evaporate. I also used a lot of paper towels to soak up some of the water from the surface. I definitely don't want BGA on my substrate so I'll take extra care. Thanks for the heads up.

I have no idea about the Java fern. This is a little experiment really. I'm not too sure about whether the leaves will melt or not.

As for planting the hairgrass...I think I'm just a little paranoid because I keep feeling that I'm killing the plants everytime I tear them apart while separating them. I know it sounds silly...I guess it's coz it's the first time I'm dealing with plants. I've separated them a little right now. I'll give it a couple of days to see if the grass is doing ok before separating them out even more. Btw, what kinda ppm levels did you end up dosing into the substrate when you kept it wet? I'm having trouble figuring that out. My first dose was pretty high, so I might just "top up" the substrate with regular water for a couple of days.

hoppycalif

When I dosed my emersed glosso I used a bottle of premixed ferts I had made up for a non-CO2 tank. It was a very weak mix of KNO3, KH2PO4 and Equilibrium. It was weak enough that I could dose the non-CO2 10 gallon tank with 10 ml, once a week. But, I don't remember what the proportions were. I squirted about 10 ml of that on the emersed glosso about once a week. You could use about 10% of what the EI weekly dosage is, and very likely that would be more than enough.

orion2001

Hey Hoppy, thanks for your reply. The confusion for me though is how to define heavy dose. For example, the mixture I put in to saturate the substrate was a mixture such that for 1 gallon of water (roughly what I used to saturate the substrate) it had 90ppm of Nitrates. However this same solution dosed for a 10 gallon (filled) tank would be 9ppm which is much more reasonable.

So when you used your premixed doses for your emersed glosso tank, I'd imagine that the ppm with respect to the much lower amount of water in the tank(substrate) would still be relatively pretty high? So I guess what I'm asking is that should I be aiming for dosing the normal ppms, relative to the amount of water in the substrate, or relative to the tank capacity once it is filled?

orion2001

Well I'm sticking to having my fert levels such that in a 10 gallon filled tank it would be around the target levels that one would hope to achieve. This seems to have worked for Hoppy and I'm hoping it works for me too.

orion2001

Well I spent a good couple of hours separating strands of hairgrass and replanting. This is what it looks like right now:



I noticed a few stalks seem to have browned some more which is not very re-assuring. Hopefully the plants will take root in the next week or 2 and then start to grow well.

Also the Java fern doesn't seem to be too happy in this emersed form. Well I guess I'm going to be testing just how hardy it can be

andrew__

I haven't had any luck with java fern emersed, hopefully it works out better for you. my tank where I managed to kill it had humidity around 70% which may have been too low for it (though it was great for everything else I tried).

orion2001

Hmm..I doubt the humidity in my tank is any higher. I'm glad that at least I didn't end up ordering the java fern online and that I found it at the local Petsmart.

jazzlvr123

I have grown full thick carpets of emmersed Hc and glosso with flying colors however. I have tried emmesed dwarf hairgrass before with little success. IME it grows way faster in ideal submersed conditions. high light/CO2. hairgrass didn't respond like glosso and Hc did to emmersed conditions. try cracking the hood just a little bit to allow a little circulation. that will help more Co2 to become available and circulate stale/ dead air out of the tank.