Micro Sword questions?!

[Danf310]

I have a 20 gallon high tropical tank. It's pretty densely planted I would say. Currently it has 6 tigers and 6 black skirt tetras, 2 mystery snails and some odd number of ghost shrimps.

Paramaters are ideal for the fish. Ammonia currently at 0, ph is neutral, slightly on the acidic side for the barbs but hardly noticeable.

Anyway, I was thinking of carpeting the bottom with micro swords. I tried dwarf hair grass in the past but have had no luck. My substrate is sand, pool filter to be exact.

My lighting is 2 t5 strip bulbs. 15 watts each so 30 total at about 9,000 k each give or take. I'm dosing with excel, no co2 unfortunately.

Is this enough to grow a respectable carpet with micro swords, or should I tweak a couple of things?

 

[aqua_chem]

Do you mean 14w? I think 18" T8s are 15w, but T5s normally don't come in that wattage.

Assuming you do have T5s, I think you'll still me in the medium range or lower range of lighting. Fortunately, microsword is somewhat more light tolerant than other foregrounds, but you'll still have slower growth than most carpeting setups. Second and much more important, CO2 injection is basically mandatory for good carpet growth. Excel probably won't cut it in this case, unless you're willing to buy a lot of it at first and wait a good long time for it to grow in.