[orion2001]

Things seem to be going pretty well with the hairgrass. Although some have mentioned that they've had trouble trying to grow hairgrass emersed, so far I think I might be able to pull it off! I can definitely see new shoots popping up from the little plantlets, even from the ones whose original leaves have turned completely brown (probably the transplant shock).

I also noticed today that some of the plantlets have sent out runners as I can see a few new shoots sticking up from the sand in places where I hadn't planted any hairgrass. I'm really excited and I can't wait to have the hairgrass grow out. I ended up buying another pot of hairgrass at petsmart since it had just shipped in 2 hours before I got to the store and it was in an amazing condition (surprisingly).
To document what I've been doing for my setup:

Lighting:2x15 Watt Spiral CFL lamps for 30 Watts on my 10 Gallon (with terrible DIY reflectors), lights on for 12.5 hours daily

Substrate: Flourite Black Sand

Initial flooding: Mixed N, P, K to levels recommended by EI for a 10 G tank...but obviously this was dissolved in less than 1 Gallon of water which was used to flood the substrate. Thus the substrate was saturated with fairly high levels of nutrients. I also used 5ml of Excel in the substrate. I poured in an EI equivalent mixture of traces on the next day.

Planting: Separating the hairgrass into small plantlets is definitely the way to go. I can definitely see the smaller plantlets being more healthy and sending out more shoots. Also, from what I see so far, I think it might help to not stick the hairgrass in too deep. In fact the interesting thing is that I dropped in a couple of hairgrass horizontally (no planting involved) to test out whether they would still take root. (HoppyCalif managed to plant some of his glosso this way). 2 of the Hairgrass strands which are horizontal have taken root and have now sent up little shoots. So you could possibly get away with just tossing the hairgrass onto your nutrient rich substrate. Another thing to note is that you should take the pains to separate out your hairgrass leaves before planting. To achieve this, with my newest pot, I separated the rockwool in water, then while having a fan blowing at me and the plantlet, I separated the leaves. This dried the leaves out letting me separate them easily, and then I planted the hairgrass. If your mist sprayer is fine enough, it shouldn't cause the leaves to stick together post misting.

Misting: Initially I was probably misting with too strong a mix of ferts. Now I alternate between misting traces and macros ever 2 days, but these are very dilute to the levels of what would be in tank water. I also have a very small amount of excel in my macro ferts solution. I mist atleast 4-5 times a day if possible. Basically I never top up my substrate manually, I use the misting to keep the substrate damp and "topped up". I also make sure never to have water showing above my substrate. If I do, I leave a bit of the hood open for a couple of hours to let the substrate dry out a little.

Well that is pretty much it for now. No pics since you won't be able to see any changes just yet. Maybe in a weeks time if all goes well I should have some encouraging results. This method does look promising!