Advice on getting HC to grow?

[sns26]

Hi folks,

Though an old hand with aquaria, I'm relatively new to the plant thing, so excuse any ignorance. About a month ago I revamped a 20 high as a planted tank. The tank is filtered with an aquaclear 30 hang-on-back filter. I'm using eco-complete for the substrate and and a couple of 2 liter yeast bottles connected to a hagen elite mini filter for CO2. (I'm going to switch to pressurized soon.) Lighting is a 2x24w Nova Extreme T5HO.

The plants are HC and dwarf hairgrass in front, HM, wisteria, and lindernia in the midground, cabomba and red ludwigia in back. Plus a crypt wendtii and a dwarf aquarium lily. A couple of livebearers and rasboras live in the tank as well as four amano shrimp.

I'm using the Tom Barr EI fertilizing method, dosing 1/4 tsp KNO3 and 1/16 tsp K2PO4 three days a week with traces (via Flourish) two days a week.

Last weekend, the water tested like this (I live in northwest DC and I use tap water):
pH - 7.0 - 7.1
GH - 11
KH - 4
Ammonia ~ 0
Nitrate - 50 ppm
Phosphate - >20 ppm
Drop checker was blue-green...showing maybe 15 ppm?

What I'm seeing is that the stem plants (the cabomba, ludwigia, wisteria, and lindernia), the lily and the crypt are doing really nicely. The hairgrass and the HM are doing ok. But the HC is just not growing. I'm actually ground slowly on it, and it seems in places to be growing algae on its leaves. Any hints for me? The phosphate number seems high, but I'm wondering if that's because of some DC tap water issue. Am I short on CO2? Or light?

[weeb]

I am by no means an expert on the subject, seeing as my tank has been planted about a week longer than yours, but the one thing I've noticed is that my HC seemed to go through a bit of an acclimatizing period which lasted about 3 weeks. It didn't really do anything, just sort of sat there. Finally about 2 weeks ago i noticed some new growth, and in the last week there has been a considerable amount of growth.

Fortunately for you, based on what I seen in the pictures, your HC, while not growing, hasn't died off yet either. Give it some time, and I'd wager it starts to grow better.

[Judi]

Nice looking tank.

You might want to consider breaking apart the clumps of HC more. In my experience, HC seems to get established and spread more quickly when I plant it as tiny clumps or even individual stems.

It could be the co2 is too low. Maybe try dosing some Excel daily. HC seems to love Excel.

I don't know if this is a factor or not, but I dose traces three times a week, not two.

By the way, once your hairgrass is really happy, it will send out lots of runners into the HC, and become intermixed with it (which may be what you want ). In one of my tanks, routine maintenance for a long time included carefully pulling or snipping hairgrass runners to keep it from taking over. It was a very small tank, so it wasn't a very big deal. It's becoming a bigger deal in my 29 --we'll see how long I want to keep doing it. I've arranged some of the hardscape to be a barrier and slow it down, which helps a little.

[PaulS]

Tank looks nice. Based on my own personal experience, foreground plants seem to take much longer to get established. Be patient, once they take hold, you should stat to see faster growth.
Paul

[Ghazanfar Ghori]

I second Judi's Excel recommendation..

[sns26]

Well, I'm still working on this...still without any grand success. I put in a pressurized rig (5 lb CO2 can + a micromatic regulator and a fabco needle valve), and I am reasonably confident that my CO2 is up where it needs to be. My ludgwigia, cabomba, and cryptocorne are growing ridiculously fast. The lindernia, HC and HM less so.

I did follow people's advice as much as I could. Excel seems to make my shrimp unhappy (whenever I dose it, they get inactive and weirdly twitchy). I did replant the HC in smaller bits, and I have noticed that it is putting out some new leaves--bright green new growth--but on balance more is coming loose from the bottom than is growing.

Anyone have any HC they want to sell me so I can replant more heavily (and more deeply) and try again? If I don't do it soon, the hairgrass is going to take over entirely...

[SCMurphy]

Put the HC into another tank and let the hairgrass do it's thing. Why fight it? The tank will look really nice with a hairgrass lawn. Part of this hobby is learning which battles to fight and which to not to fight.

[ddavila06]

looks very pretty! huge change since the first photo