4 Ft Planted tanks

[Peanut8787]

How do you diffused your co2? The co2 is somewhere on the low side and you using 3ft light for 4ft tank?

[sanjaypills55]

Opps my mistake... it should be the 4 Ft Aquazonic 54W 4 tubes...ha ha

I use the long cylindrical reactor..i connected a T joint to the Fluval cannister outlet to let the Co2 mix with the water in the reactor..
Yes i kept a bubble count low so that i dont need to refill the tank more often :-) expensive & troublesome to refill
Thats why i dose Florish excel.. so that Co2 should be enough

[Shadow]

that is not the way, limited CO2 will only invite algae and stunt your plants grow.

[sanjaypills55]

Hmm maybe i should increase the bubble count... Btw how many bubble per second, should be ideal?

[felix_fx2]

The co2 very little IMO. Plus the fact excel is supplement not a total replacement.

Most people doing hi-tech tanks have 3 bps or higher (take an gauge from 5 counts and average it out, after 3.5 bps extremely hard to me).

[sanjaypills55]

Will try increasing the Co2 tonight & see if it helps growth of my hair grass.

Thanks guys for you advice...

Will update with pictures if there is an improvement.

[michael lai]

Hair grass grows like wild fire, firstly it is planted too thick in a cluster. plant them sparingly, not more than a few strands at a time. Once established, maybe after a week, trim them and watch, have fun!

[michael lai]

From your pictures, your hairgrass is doing fine, bright green and arching downwards, your lighting is sufficient. If not for your discus, a chiller would be just nice

[chlorophyll]

Its been almost a month & i don't see any growth in my Hair grass.. either Hair grass is a difficult plant or my light & nutrients are not enough..

I will wait for some more time..then consider getting some less demanding foreground plants

Nice tank Bro! and very promising. I had a 422 planted tank. I used 4x54w T5HO and had hairgrass as my foreground. They spreaded only when i placed my lights further forward so that the hairgrass was directly below. Growing carpet plant in a 2 feet deep tank is quite a challenge.

[mincedmeat]

stormhawk posted somewhere (read yesterday but I can't remember which post/thread it was) that Amano had 3bps in his 2ft set up. Your current tank is a 422 so it definitely has to be more than 3bps in order to achieve good growth of the plants.

[sanjaypills55]

Hope to see a nice green carpet of Hair grass
Bro Michael!
I will try to spread it more, but even if i plant it deep some will always float up, so i have to keep planting them with long tweezers. I have corydoras.. maybe they pull it out.
Hair grass does looks ok, but even after almost a month i dont see any growth or new shoot

Bro Chlorophyll
Yeah the depth of 2 ft does make it a challenge..yes i did move the lights forward to have more light for my hair grass

Bro mince meat

Guess the only thing left todo is to increase the CO2 & hope & pray i get a nice carpet of hairgrass

[mincedmeat]

When you can, trim the hairgrass. Trimming will encourage the plant to grow runners along the foreground hastening the process of your much desired hairgrass carpet.

[sanjaypills55]

At this moment they are so tiny... i feel trimming might just kill them.

I dont see any growth after i planted them last month

Shouldnt i just wait for it to grow taller before trimming

[mincedmeat]

You don't need to trim them right down to the roots. Just trim off the top will do.