Ever thought about just sticking with gravel and maybe adding some spixi snails. There are plenty of plants you could add that would do fine the the gravel.

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Ever thought about just sticking with gravel and maybe adding some spixi snails. There are plenty of plants you could add that would do fine the the gravel.

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Trying also to understand why you would change anything provided that the breeder tank is doing ok?

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I am new on this but i will share my progress with my hair grass.

I am for the moment only using flourish excel everyday and leave zone once a week. I am using 3 10w lights to archive some progress until i get my Kessil A160 Sun next week.

Also the next upgrade will be a CO2 injection system.

I am also breeding Shrimps. You can see some in the picture. Any suggestion for my tank ?

Before

After 1 month with Flourish Excel and more light.

 

That's not a bad looking tank. In your mind, what does the flourish excel do for you? Also I personally would be careful with CO2. I read somewhere it can mess with your PH. I try to do as little as possible with the tank since shrimp are so sensitive. That light is also very extreme. It's kind of a myth, but shrimp might not like the bright light. Besides it's just a ton of energy. Hopefully I don't need that much light for the grass.

Edit: Oh yeah, you don't have driftwood. I like malaysian driftwood. You should have that. Also Indian almond leaves. I try to keep 1 in there all the time.
Edit 2: Oh never mind I now see the leaf!
Edit 3: Oh you have fish! You really should not have fish if you are really trying to breed shrimp. It's ok if you just want a fun tank, but purely for breeding shrimp you shouldn't have any fish.

 

I'm no expert but have tried growing this myself low tech and it struggled, it stayed alive and I had the odd runner but on the whole I'd count it as a failure as it never spread sufficient (6500 led high plant, eco complete sub), I've heard of people succeed without highlight and co2 for this plant but they tend to be in the minority. Again just my personal experience.
I'd also be concerned adding any substraight while your shrimp are still in the tank (assuming that's the case). Have you thought about an alternative such as subwassertang or baby tears to provide some cover?

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Yeah I'm concerned about that substrate too. I figure maybe if I wash it somehow, and if it's not an active substrate...It should be ok. It should only bother the shrimp for a few days. Hopefully nothing huge. I'm hoping it will be worth it in the long term if there is grass. Yeah maybe it is a high light plant. I could still up my light a bit to try to make all the plants semi-happy, and hopefully that would be enough to keep it growing decently.

The kind of substrate I'm planning to use is totally artificial as far as I know. In a sense I think that means it's clean, so no huge killer clouds. Anyways the layer is getting really thin and I'd like to try having more substrate and maybe that will make the plants/grass happier too.

 

ZEUSFL

I am new on this but i will share my progress with my hair grass.

I am for the moment only using flourish excel everyday and leave zone once a week.

Be careful with Leaf zone fertilizer. It only has 2 nutrients Iron and potassium. There are 14 plants need. It is unlikely that your tap water has all 14. And you don't appear to have a lot of fish so it is unlikely you are feeding enough to provide them. You substrate may have 14 but those will diminish over time. I suggest you switch to nilocg thrive (nilocg.com). It's a much better fertilizer.

Planted some a month ago. I am miking my own fertilizer, macro and micro plus some sodium and excel) It is growing but hasn't spread much in the gravel (which I suspected was going to happen. It is very coarse and grass is not attaching well to it. I would suggest using a sand substrate. You could just mix that in with your gravel. Some people like black diamond blasting sand it is black and some people like it. At present a I don't see any growth issues. As long as water is properly fertilized it should grow.

Also I wanna ask if there might be a better plant that just grows like crazy. I'm trying to up the amount of plants to the point where they actually start filtering the water a bit and I don't care about looks a ton, unless it's about all the same

You might want to consider floating plants. such as Salvinia Minima. it floats on the water so it doesn't need CO2 (gets it from the air). As long it has macro and micro nutrients and light it should grow. Generally floating plants grow fast. If it does then you can add plants to the substrate. Plants such as
are relatively easy to remove them by hand. Very small floating plants such as duck weed can be very hard to remove completely from a tank.

 

Be careful with Leaf zone fertilizer. It only has 2 nutrients Iron and potassium. There are 14 plants need. It is unlikely that your tap water has all 14. And you don't appear to have a lot of fish so it is unlikely you are feeding enough to provide them. You substrate may have 14 but those will diminish over time. I suggest you switch to nilocg thrive (nilocg.com). It's a much better fertilizer.

Planted some a month ago. I am miking my own fertilizer, macro and micro plus some sodium and excel) It is growing but hasn't spread much in the gravel (which I suspected was going to happen. It is very coarse and grass is not attaching well to it. I would suggest using a sand substrate. You could just mix that in with your gravel. Some people like black diamond blasting sand it is black and some people like it. At present a I don't see any growth issues. As long as water is properly fertilized it should grow.



You might want to consider floating plants. such as Salvinia Minima. it floats on the water so it doesn't need CO2 (gets it from the air). As long it has macro and micro nutrients and light it should grow. Generally floating plants grow fast. If it does then you can add plants to the substrate. Plants such as
are relatively easy to remove them by hand. Very small floating plants such as duck weed can be very hard to remove completely from a tank.

Thanks for your interesting suggestion, but I have 2 issues with it: It blots out the light for the other plants below, and it's so small I don't imagine it's going to be acting as much of a filter, but maybe I'm wrong and size isn't everything. I think I already have the most all-purpose plant: Java moss! It grows every which way, floats wherever. I guess I should put research into this but I'd wonder what you guys would suggest I do with said java moss. Right now it's in sort of a big round cloud, and then it gets stringy in some direction or another depending on where the light is. I once watched a video where a guy said to just leave it alone and he had a big clump...so that's what I've been doing. I've just put it in my tank, put it on the side with the sponge filter, and just let it go. It's worked to an extent but I wish it would actually be even bigger. Then again I have moved, and messed with it when I was just starting. When I moved houses, it got messed up since I drained almost all the water.

Anyways my grass and my aquarium tools are on the way. Tomorrow I should be able to get my hands on some substrate. Yeah maybe I will just get sand. I like sand the most and I reckon it has some good minerals in it. My worry is that will dwarf hair grass grow in it? Grass growing in sand just doesn't make sense to me, but maybe that's because I'm thinking terrestrially.

 

I don't imagine it's going to be acting as much of a filter, but maybe I'm wrong and size isn't everything.

For filtering in my experience growth rate is more important the size. A large plant that isn't growing won't need a lot of nutrients and won't do much filtering. A fast growing plant will take in as much as it can get. Unfortunately if a plant cannot get a nutrient it won't grow. So you will need enough in the water to get growth but not too much that your nitrate and organics stay low. So fertilizer is needed in most cases.

Grass growing in sand just doesn't make sense to me, but maybe that's because I'm thinking terrestrially.

IN hydroponics plants are grown only in water. no soil and many large hydroponics farms are growing common food plants. IN order for plants to grow they need 14 elements plus carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. The Crbon hydrogen and oxygen come for air and water. The other 14 are commonly extracted from soil. But if there is enough dissolved in water soil isn't needed. The dwarf hair grass in my aquarium was lab grown in gell with fertilizer. No soil. IN my aquarium the gravel is quartz gravel . Its mostly silicon dioxide. My water is RO with no nutrients in it. So my plants are entirely dependent on there fertilizer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroponics

 

For filtering in my experience growth rate is more important the size. A large plant that isn't growing won't need a lot of nutrients and won't do much filtering. A fast growing plant will take in as much as it can get. Unfortunately if a plant cannot get a nutrient it won't grow. So you will need enough in the water to get growth but not too much that your nitrate and organics stay low. So fertilizer is needed in most cases.



IN hydroponics plants are grown only in water. no soil and many large hydroponics farms are growing common food plants. IN order for plants to grow they need 14 elements plus carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. The Crbon hydrogen and oxygen come for air and water. The other 14 are commonly extracted from soil. But if there is enough dissolved in water soil isn't needed. The dwarf hair grass in my aquarium was lab grown in gell with fertilizer. No soil. IN my aquarium the gravel is quartz gravel . Its mostly silicon dioxide. My water is RO with no nutrients in it. So my plants are entirely dependent on there fertilizer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroponics

Very interesting. I'm learning a lot about plants. Thanks for the info! I understand the basics of hydroponics. I take it you're saying the grass will indeed grow in sand. I'm just worried that the roots won't be able to spread in the sand for some reason.

 

For a faster spread, is better to cut the hairgrass 1 inch or less or take an established bunch and keep going dividing in small ones and replant?

 

I honestly don't know, but part of my philosophy on plants is to leave them alone. You might want to split them up at first but once they're planted I'd leave them alone.

 

I’ve grown quite a bit of DHG. It does best under high light (PAR >80 at the substrate) and with good CO2 levels. Even then, it is very slow to 'catch'. Once it begins to spread, it will fill in rather quickly (3-4 weeks). Without the high light / high CO2 combination (don’t do high light without pressurized CO2), the spread is much slower. In the former situation, it can take a month or more to catch and spread. In the latter, it can take 2-4 months to get going.

I’ve grown it in several types of inert substrate (Fluorite, Super Naturals, Sand below the Super Naturals and the cheap gravel that pet stores sell). No nutrients are required in the substrate. It can all be provided via the water column.

Split the DHG up into no more than 3-5 blades and plant about an inch apart with about a third of the plant in the substrate. Once planted, trim them to encourage horizontal growth. If you don't trim them, they will focus on growing tall.

 

This is useful info! Thanks! It confirmed my suspicions about high light and CO2. If I have a java fern and java moss in my tank, but I want to grow the DHG...should I just turn my lights on as high as they'll go? They're semi-weak 30 buck LED's. They still get pretty bright but maybe not as intense as other lights. Will the bright light hurt the java fern and java moss?

 

Well I got the DHG today and put it in the tank of course. It really looks pretty good even with what I have now! I split one of them into smaller pieces and I just left one all in one big chunk. That's another one of my experiments! We'll see if the small chunks actually grow faster than the big chunk. Also getting 12 more ivory mystery snails tomorrow, and some asian golden clam! Let me know if you care enough to want pictures!

Also got aquarium tools in the mail today, hey that was convenient! Whaddya know! Anyways they helped a lot. Those bent tongs are really good for planting the grass.

Also I found my lighting system online by happenstance. Amazon was showing me what I'd already bought as it sometimes does.

https://www.amazon.com/Aquarium-11-...2PW1ZMW5PVD&pf_rd_s=desktop-rhf&pf_rd_t=40701&psc=1&refRID=Z4CTB15A02PW1ZMW5PVD

 

Good. You may want to start a journal to document your successes, failures and progress.

I took a look at that light. It is probably meant to give viewing light as opposed to being designed for plants. The plant lights we typically use have good peaks in the blue and red regions, which is what plants use. Take a look through these threads to get an idea of how it works:

https://www.plantedtank.net/forums/10-lighting/1153810-beamswork-da-fspec-dhl-6500k-par-lux-kelvin-pur-data.html

https://www.plantedtank.net/forums/10-lighting/160396-led-lighting-compendium.html