[Bunbuku]

I was going to do an aggressive trim on my HC lawn last weekend which grew ~1.5" thick in some places. I put masking tape along the sides to mark how far down I wanted to trim. Then thru the sides of the aquarium I find many baby tiger shrimp ~1/4" long hiding under the HC lawn :shock:!

I think they are going "underHC" to hide from the Ram. Not wishing to deprive the little fellas of their cover, I chickened out and only trimmed the HC down ~1/2"

Will I be harming my HC by leaving it so tall ?

 

[jazzlvr123]

if you don't allow light to reach the roots of hc over a prolonged period of time the lower parts of the hc will die off and the hc will loose its rooting into the substrate and float to the top. I learned this the hard way *sigh* make sure you trim pretty aggressively. when Mr. Amano trims hc he trims off all of the foliage on top and only leaves the bare root structure behind, surprisingly the hc recovers quickly. You don't necessarily have to trim that aggressively to keep hc healthy however this trim method subsequently keeps the hc extremely low growing so you don't inevitably end up with a 2" tall hc lawn

 

[Bunbuku]

if you don't allow light to reach the roots of hc over a prolonged period of time the lower parts of the hc will die off and the hc will loose its rooting into the substrate and float to the top. I learned this the hard way *sigh* make sure you trim pretty aggressively. when Mr. Amano trims hc he trims off all of the foliage on top and only leaves the bare root structure behind, surprisingly the hc recovers quickly. You don't necessarily have to trim that aggressively to keep hc healthy however this trim method subsequently keeps the hc extremely low growing so you don't inevitably end up with a 2" tall hc lawn

Thanks jazzlvr123!

Does this rule of thumb also apply when the HC lawn is the early stages of being established - say the first 4-6 weeks after setup?