Carpeting general hairgrass with CO2

3634 Views 20 Replies 5 Participants Last post by Dman911, Jan 4, 2017

sharambil

Discussion Starter · Dec 24, 2016

How long does it take to develop a dense carpet of hairgrass with fertilizers and CO2? What are your personal experiences? Any good techniques out there?

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

1 - 20 of 21 Posts

John Wong

· #2 · Dec 24, 2016

3

sharambil said:
How long does it take to develop a dense carpet of hairgrass with fertilizers and CO2? What are your personal experiences? Any good techniques out there?

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Basically patience and hard work and a pair of good pincette.

There are several factor
1. Divide your hairgrass receive into as many smaller bunch as possible.
2. Plant each bunch into substrate with certain spacing, just like planting rice/paddy field/ your glass lawn in your backyard.
3. The more you plant, the faster it form carpets.

Newly planted on 16 Oct.

1st Nov

1st December

Medium light + co2. Trim to keep them short. Mine is parvula + acicularis.

Sent from my MX4 using Tapatalk

See less See more

Reactions: 1

Deutschlandiesel

· #3 · Dec 30, 2016

Anyone experienced in carpeting dhg with ferts, about 3wpg and no co2?

Reactions: 1

Dman911

· #4 · Jan 1, 2017

Deutschlandiesel said:
Anyone experienced in carpeting dhg with ferts, about 3wpg and no co2?

No personal experience as of yet and I just planted a Dry Start Method DHG yesterday. From my research and I have spent over a month reading anything I can pertaining to others experiences and reading as much research material as possible, others can correct me if I'm wrong and I may very well be but I would say your best chance of carpeting this plant without Co2 would be DSM because the plant will have access to the much needed Co2 from the air. From my understanding DHG does not compete well against other faster growing plants for Co2 when submerged so you would need to add Co2 via DIY/Pressurized if you planned to try and propagate it submersed. However in some of the research I did there were some ppl who had success in sustaining the DHG carpet submersed after growing it out emersed without Co2. The apparent key to this for them was keeping the DHG by itself because of the limited available Co2 in a tank with no injection once they flooded it. In a tank with no Co2 injection a lower lighting level or reduced lighting period was also used once submerged to slow down photosynthesis and to try and keep a balance of dissolved Co2 in the water allowing the gas exchange from surface agitation to keep up with consumption. I would recommend researching material from Diana Walstad if you want to try this, as for my self I will be using Co2 injection as my head is already about to explode from the immense amount of reading I have done over the last 2 months. I just cant take any more research.

Dan

See less See more

Reactions: 1

John Wong

· #5 · Jan 2, 2017

Deutschlandiesel said:
Anyone experienced in carpeting dhg with ferts, about 3wpg and no co2?

Agree to Dman911.
I tried dhg without co2 before. Yes dhg will survive and spread and eventually will form carpet. No because it will take forever for it to form carpet. Growth rate of dhg without co2 is just too slow.

Sent from my MX4 using Tapatalk

Deutschlandiesel

· #6 · Jan 2, 2017

John Wong said:
Agree to Dman911.
I tried dhg without co2 before. Yes dhg will survive and spread and eventually will form carpet. No because it will take forever for it to form carpet. Growth rate of dhg without co2 is just too slow.

Sent from my MX4 using Tapatalk

Starting to look like I should just try another plant John.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Waters

· #7 · Jan 3, 2017

2

It took me about 2 months to grow a full carpet with CO2 and ferts.......

See less See more

Dman911

· #8 · Jan 3, 2017

Waters said:
It took me about 2 months to grow a full carpet with CO2 and ferts.......

Nice Rug Waters

Dan

Waters

· #9 · Jan 3, 2017

Dman911 said:
Nice Rug Waters

Dan

When you say it like that it sounds like an insult lol.......

Dman911

· #10 · Jan 3, 2017

Waters said:
When you say it like that it sounds like an insult lol.......

Lol not intended to be, it looks great!!! I'm hoping mine will fill in as nice as yours

Dan

Waters

· #11 · Jan 3, 2017

Dman911 said:
Lol not intended to be, it looks great!!! I'm hoping mine will fill in as nice as yours

Dan

I am sure it will. If I can help in anyway let me know :smile2:

Dman911

· #12 · Jan 3, 2017

Waters said:
I am sure it will. If I can help in anyway let me know :smile2:

Just started DHG with DSM in Aquasoil Amazonia so I'm confident in that. Once I flood the tank it should get interesting lol and I will more than likely need some advice.

Dan

Waters

· #13 · Jan 3, 2017

Dman911 said:
Just started DHG with DSM in Aquasoil Amazonia so I'm confident in that. Once I flood the tank it should get interesting lol and I will more than likely need some advice.

Dan

I also used ADA Amazonia but I was filled and running CO2/ferts from day one. I wonder how the high levels of ammonia from the Aquasoil will affect already established plants that were grown emerged? I guess with frequent water changes it won't make a difference.

Dman911

· #14 · Jan 3, 2017

Waters said:
I also used ADA Amazonia but I was filled and running CO2/ferts from day one. I wonder how the high levels of ammonia from the Aquasoil will affect already established plants that were grown emerged? I guess with frequent water changes it won't make a difference.

Im' assuming they are going to be off the charts when I flood it but the substrate should be cycling during the dry start so it may help a small bit. But yeah I will probably be doing 80% a day for the first few days and then 50% every other for a week or longer depending on test results. I'm hoping by week 3 flooded my levels will be good enough for some otto's and nerite snails.

Dan

John Wong

· #15 · Jan 3, 2017

Ammonia will form NH4+ ion under acidic water. May be plant can use it?

Sent from my MX4 using Tapatalk

Dman911

· #16 · Jan 3, 2017

John Wong said:
Ammonia will form NH4+ ion under acidic water. May be plant can use it?

Sent from my MX4 using Tapatalk

From my understanding they like ammonia but to much can be toxic to them aswell

Dan

Waters

· #17 · Jan 4, 2017

Yeah, I lost a few plants during the cycle due to high ammonia levels....once those were under control, everything took off.

John Wong

· #18 · Jan 4, 2017

I read a book by Walstad regarding the experiment comparing ammonium ion and nitrate. According to the result most aquatic plants utilised ammonium more readily than nitrate. The only question regarding the experiment is that she use 2ppm instead of higher level of ammonium.
I believe when ammonia dissolve in water it readily accept proton to form Ammonium hydroxide, which is basic. After that the ammonium hydroxide may react with acidic compound to form ammonium salts which also soluble in water. In other words, in lower pH water more ammonia form ammonium in water which are relatively harmless.
NH3 + H2O -> NH4+ + OH-
In CO2 enrich water
2NH3+H2O+CO2 -> (NH4)2CO3
Since we normally dose around 20-30ppm of co2 most ammonia will react with carbonic acid to form ammonium ion.
However when water pH is high ammonium ammonia equilibrium will shift more to other left. In other words more ammonia will be present in water instead of ammonium.

sometimes I suspect plants may not dead due to high ammonia level,in acidic water it may in other way round. Plants death cause increase in ammonia. High pH water increase toxicity of ammonia in water to fish. However it still remain undecided whether ammonia molecule in stead of ion are toxic to aquatic plants. I'm still wandering is there any scientific journal covering this topic.

p.s. all my idea are base on logic speculation and may not work the same way in real life. Any one who work in scientific field should devise an experiment and let us know the result.

Sent from my MX4 using Tapatalk

See less See more

Dman911

· #19 · Jan 4, 2017 (Edited)

John Wong said:
I read a book by Walstad regarding the experiment comparing ammonium ion and nitrate. According to the result most aquatic plants utilised ammonium more readily than nitrate. The only question regarding the experiment is that she use 2ppm instead of higher level of ammonium.
I believe when ammonia dissolve in water it readily accept proton to form Ammonium hydroxide, which is basic. After that the ammonium hydroxide may react with acidic compound to form ammonium salts which also soluble in water. In other words, in lower pH water more ammonia form ammonium in water which are relatively harmless.
NH3 + H2O -> NH4+ + OH-
In CO2 enrich water
2NH3+H2O+CO2 -> (NH4)2CO3
Since we normally dose around 20-30ppm of co2 most ammonia will react with carbonic acid to form ammonium ion.
However when water pH is high ammonium ammonia equilibrium will shift more to other left. In other words more ammonia will be present in water instead of ammonium.

sometimes I suspect plants may not dead due to high ammonia level,in acidic water it may in other way round. Plants death cause increase in ammonia. High pH water increase toxicity of ammonia in water to fish. However it still remain undecided whether ammonia molecule in stead of ion are toxic to aquatic plants. I'm still wandering is there any scientific journal covering this topic.

p.s. all my idea are base on logic speculation and may not work the same way in real life. Any one who work in scientific field should devise an experiment and let us know the result.

Sent from my MX4 using Tapatalk

Sounds logical to me and I think I have read the same article. I would be interested to see at what level ammonia starts to become toxic to plants. I realize that would be species specific but if it was performed on one of the more sensitive species it could help establish a good guideline.

Dan

John Wong

· #20 · Jan 4, 2017

Dman911 said:
Sounds logical to me and I think I have read the same article. I would be interested to see at what level ammonia starts to become toxic to plants. I realize that would be species specific but if it was performed on one of the more sensitive species it could help establish a good guideline.

Dan

Another info, according to this chart, given that our tank pH is 6 and temperature around 25 degree Celsius, if test kit give total ammonia level result of 4ppm, only 0.0024ppm of ammonia exist in harmful molecule form, other 3.9976 ppm of ammonia exist in ionised form or ammonium.

Sent from my MX4 using Tapatalk

See less See more

1 - 20 of 21 Posts

This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.