Planting HC emersed first, and then fill

[John N.]

The thought process here is to plant HC in your aquarium and don't fill. Let it grow in as emersed and then fill the tank with water. Has anyone done this? I'm thinking of trying it out in a 10 gallon to avoid the HC uprooting, and algae problems in the beginning. Is it worth trying and how long does it take to fill in?

-John N.

[BPASCreighton]

It works pretty well, but I takes a while. The moisture/humidity needs to be consistent within the tank. So just putting a glass lid will do the trick, but make sure to get the substrate WET.

I mist mine a few times a day when I think about it just to make sure its moist, but this is because I don't have a top over it. I should just saran wrap the thing but misting every once in a while isn't bad.

Hope that helps

[Hoppy]

I just started a ten gallon tank with glosso as the carpet, and using the emersed method. I'm delighted that I could poke those tiny plants into the substrate and not worry that they would float back out. After 2 days they are still green! I'm using Black Flourite Sand over Diamond Black (Leonardite) for a substrate.

[kakkoii]

sound interesting. I was going to do(still planning on it)this with glosso on my 29 gallon, hilly, aquascape, using eggcrates and topsoil.

[Pat7676]

Hoppy hows your glosso doing in your 10 gallon?

[slickwillislim]

You guys are cheaters.

I have grown HC emersed and it works great, but this is outside in a shady spot next to our water heater in a seedling tray. I prefer to grow it under water in my tank because I usually grow it in with other plants that can't go emersed. ex. Blyxa japonica....


It is really nice to not have to worry about algae. My HC recently got attacked by moss and cladphora algae.... Its so frustrating to try and get out and I can't sell or trade it knowing there is probably clado in it...

[John N.]

Originally Posted by slickwillislim

It is really nice to not have to worry about algae. My HC recently got attacked by moss and cladphora algae.... Its so frustrating to try and get out and I can't sell or trade it knowing there is probably clado in it...

This is the main reason why I want to grow a layout of HC this way. Clado algae always turns it into muck, and I have a difficult time getting rid of it. No army of shrimp can deal with it.

I'm not so keen on misting it every day though..hmm.

-John N.

[BPASCreighton]

Just keep it covered well and make sure it doesn't dry out and you should be fine.

[Hoppy]

Originally Posted by Pat7676

Hoppy hows your glosso doing in your 10 gallon?

I planted it a week ago, and as far as I can tell, all of the little plantlets are growing. Some are growing well. It looks now like no more than 2 more weeks before I will want to add the water. No algae that I can see, so far.

It is going to be tempting to pull a couple of the plantlets to see how much root development I have, but logic says if the plants grow emersed, they have to be developing good roots.

I may be able to post a couple of pictures tomorrow.

I have done no misting, but I do add about 20 ml of water every 3 days to make up the evaporation. The only fertilizing I have done is once adding 20 ml of very weak solution of KNO3, KH2PO4 and Equilibrium.

[Pat7676]

Cool when you get those pics post them i would like to see them.

[kakkoii]

yes, please do.

[Hoppy]

This is the tank today (above), and below is the tank a week ago. You can definitely see that the plants are growing.

[Pat7676]

Its looking good, good growth. I wish i had a extra tank that i could do this with.

[Orlando]

Im starting to grow HC in my crypt/moss garden box. Its taking to it very well.

[John N.]

Nice Job Hoppy. This is sort of exactly what I wanted to do.

How long do you leave the lights on, and how often are you wetting/misting the glosso?
Lastly, is there going to any aquascaping done or is this soley an experimental tank?

-John N.

[Hoppy]

Thanks John, I leave the lights on from about 7:00 am to about 10:00 pm. The tank is reasonably well sealed against loss of moisture, so I have had to add only about 20 ml of water every 2 or 3 days to keep the substrate wet. The big irregular shaped area minus glosso will be where I plant Rotala green (probably) along with possible one other plant. This will then be my experiment in pruning to achieve a shape I want. After I have this set up for a few months at most, and feel I have learned what I want to learn about it, I will probably tear it down and try something else I want to learn about.

Pat: I felt like you do - I envied those with multiple tanks who could experiment when they got the urge. So, I used Craigslist to find a ten gallon tank at a good price, $20 for the tank and the Perfecto hood/light fixture - both brand new. Then I made a stand for it, using scrap plywood, that looks good enough for my wife to allow me to set it up in our living area, modified the Perfecto light fixture to use two screw-in fluorescent bulbs with good reflectors, and started experimenting with it. The filter is just a HOB design, very cheap, so the whole thing didn't cost much. I find this to be a great learning tool.

[Freemann]

I am growing glosso, HC, 2 eleoharis species, plus Japanese hairgrass for 4 years now. one of the easiest to grow is actually HC I don't even water it in winter maybe once a month i use forest soil with some laterite added to it A trick I do is that if I want to enrich the soil in the tank after a year I remove the soil together with the grass (if you let it dry a bit it comes out as a sigle piece, like this lawn carpets) then you can add fresh soil under it, wet it and place the mat on top, this way you have renewed soil for the already overcrowded HC to run into.
Also lots of times once a year maybe grasses can die this is no problem for most of them, in most cases HC will start all over again, in the beggining with tiny leaves that start expanding to cover the whole bottom. HC will flower if it feels threatend and will grow all over after dying.
John I think that if a tank is "fully" balanced with no algae whatsoever you can grow any grass and have no algae problems it is just a matter of how mature your tank is with all it implies.
What I am trying to say is this that even if the HC was grown emersed if the tank is not balanced after it is filled up and the photo is not taken the first week after fiiling it you still run a high risk of algae manifesting specially with all this rich uncovered substrate in case of soil, now if you grow it emersed in aquasoil (specially one that has been left submersed for some time to leech stuff before using emersed) that is much better.

[John N.]

Freemann, I never thought of algae problems after the HC filled in. You make a great point. I'm going to watch Hoppy's setup and see how it does if he decides to fill his glosso setup up.

-John N.

[Orlando]

I just started growing UG and HC in my crypt garden. And so far all of them love my mudd box. I will post some not so good pics soon.

[BPASCreighton]

Orlando,

Is the UG hard to get growing? I'm planning on growing some outside this summer. How do you set up a crypt. box? I was thinking to use SMS. What do you do?

Thanks,
Creighton