2.5 Gallon Dry Start

[bevoholic]

I've decided to try at my at DSM to grow some HC and possibly some Anubias nana. I have to throw out a thanks to jetajockey for his video tutorials.

Setup:

2.5 gallon tank
1 1/4" regular black aquarium gravel
1 1/4" Eco Complete
Finnex FugeRay 12"

First I put in the regular black gravel and then I layered the Eco Complete on top of it. Once I got the substrate in I took two cups of water and mixed in 1mL of Flourish Comprehensive then used that to flood the substrate. Then I added the Dwarf Baby Tears and the Anubias nana.

Lights are running from 7am-11pm.

Will be opening it up once a week to blow some fresh CO2 into the tank, and spritzing it with more water mixed with Flourish.

Hopefully in a month or so I'll have a nice carpet of HC.

 

[gman42]

Im following

 

[DanTheGuppyMan]

FOLLOWING. lol I want to see how your attempt at DSM turns out! Hope to learn some things before I start mine

 

[aqua_chem]

Did you use tank water or tap water? My only concern is that you won't have a source of macros.

 

[jetajockey]

Looks good, for the first several days you might want to spray it daily or even a few times a day to keep things from getting too dry. Eventually you'll get a feel for how they are doing, moisture wise, just by glancing at them.

Mark brings up a good point, ecocomplete is not going to work like soil. If you have dry ferts handy, mix a solution in water for spraying. At this point you can use terrestrial ferts since its fishless, just remember to test for nh3 before stocking.

 

[bevoholic]

Did you use tank water or tap water? My only concern is that you won't have a source of macros.

I used tap water.

Looks good, for the first several days you might want to spray it daily or even a few times a day to keep things from getting too dry. Eventually you'll get a feel for how they are doing, moisture wise, just by glancing at them.

I will keep that in mind. Thanks.

 

[jetajockey]

I added to my post

 

[Scottyhorse]

I will want to see how fast this takes, because I want a nice carpet of something for one of my next tanks, but I really don't want to wait for a long time, LOL

 

[bevoholic]

Jeta, mix up a solution of Macros?

 

[jetajockey]

Definitely, as Mark noted, you'll run out of them quickly without supplement. The Good news is that since there is not much water involved you don't have to worry too much about algae at this point, and since there's no fish you can be more liberal with the ferts than normal.

 

[aqua_chem]

Not too liberal though. To concentrated a solution and you can promote other things to grow.