japanese hairgrass dying / started turning brown

[jkcs]

Hi everyone,


my jap HG is not growing, instead it is starting to die. mine was planted on 10/7/15.


My setup:
1) seachem flourite red covered by seachem flourite black sand
2) HG bought in submersed form
3) dosing ferts (seachem N,P, K and trace) weekly and excel, 1 ml daily starting 13/7/15, of course I did add 5ml for the initial dose
4) 2x1x1 ft tank
5) 48w of t5 light, on for 6 hrs
6) low tech tank
7) temperature - read in AQ, some said it is not important while some said it is. so I will not care more regarding temp


should my HG fail, what other type of carpeting plants is recommended? Also let me know where to get them because the real name of the plant is at times, hard to remember.


many thanks
cheers.


p.s. is KH only important to a high tech tank? can I ignore KH if mine is a low tech version?

[Urban Aquaria]

Hairgrass is a very slow grower in non-Co2 injected tanks, so even with ample light and nutrients, their overall growth rate is still heavily restricted by the lack of carbon availability.... hence the older growth would tend to melt faster than new growth can replace it.

For low tech tank setups, you could look at other easier carpet plants which are more tolerant of non-Co2 injected environments, like glosso or monte carlo (aka MC).

As for kH, it controls how much buffer the water has against pH swings... but for most planted tanks that use active aquasoil (ie. ADA Amazonia aquasoil), the soil will usually buffer the pH lower and keep the kH at zero, so the soil itself controls those 2 parameters, therefore you don't need to bother about it.

[jkcs]

thank you UA. you are the best.
too bad I'm not using the ada soil