welp. i messed up royally

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RevLine

Aquarium Advice Activist
Joined
Feb 1, 2015
Messages
135
Location
new jersey
bought 2 pots of dwarf baby tears (cuba kind) today for a 2.2 gallon cube aquascape i'm planning. first time handling them.

the first pot was a disaster. did it with my fingers. it ended up being separated into, quite literally for half of them, single-stemmed/rooted portions of DBT as i took off wool...

did better with the second one by cutting portions. but now i just have clumps of fragments from the first pot just half-floating, half planted into the fluorite gravel as best as i can in the container i'm using for dry start method with little DBT fragments floating everywhere.

i guess there's no denying that i dug myself a hole into planting these fragments individually when i aquascape huh? and will the floating and single fragments survive?
 
Might wanna invest in some aquascaping tools.

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I'm confused, is this attempt with the DBT (HC) with the DSM? If so, why are there "fragments floating everywhere" as if it's flooded already? And yes, some good pinsettes or long tweezers would make planting the HC much easier. Are you going to be injecting co2? What's your fertilizer regimen going to be? Is lighting moderate to high (30+ PAR)?
 
I'm confused, is this attempt with the DBT (HC) with the DSM? If so, why are there "fragments floating everywhere" as if it's flooded already? And yes, some good pinsettes or long tweezers would make planting the HC much easier. Are you going to be injecting co2? What's your fertilizer regimen going to be? Is lighting moderate to high (30+ PAR)?

this is HC. and because i had the substrate sloped. the lower section showed more water, so that's where they've been floating around. but i've actually lowered the water level now to the lowest part of the substrate and yes, i now have invested in a good set of tweezers and i've planted the fragments as best as i can.

i don't have CO2 injection but i have flourish excel and planning to use a liquid fert. as for the lighting, it will be under one of those $15 LED aquarium lights that you can get on amazon. it's a 2.2 gallon so i didn't think it would need something very expensive, no?

this is model light i'm getting:
Vktech 24 LEDs Aquarium Fishbowl Clip Light Lamp

description says 3.5w and sorry i am not well-educated on lighting as far as PAR and lumens go.
 
Well there's just too many variables with unknown lighting. Hopefully you'll get at least moderate light being that tank is so small. HC is certainly not an easy plant. It's quite needy of light, ferts, and especially carbon. I've only grown it with co2... Hopefully you can find the right balance with liquid carbon in lieu of it. It's still a carbon source, but in terms of effectiveness, on a scale of 1 to 10, where co2 is a 10, it's like a 6. So you may have to dose fairly heavy and often relative to the 2g tank, but not too much to cause harm. The tricky part is when you transition from DSM to flooded conditions. Usually, co2 is cranked up to help as HC acclimates to being submerged. After all, HC is one of those plants that prefers emersed conditions and that's why it's so CO2/carbon needy.. IME, it also needs nitrates. Anyways, good luck and let us know how it turns out.
 
Well there's just too many variables with unknown lighting. Hopefully you'll get at least moderate light being that tank is so small. HC is certainly not an easy plant. It's quite needy of light, ferts, and especially carbon. I've only grown it with co2... Hopefully you can find the right balance with liquid carbon in lieu of it. It's still a carbon source, but in terms of effectiveness, on a scale of 1 to 10, where co2 is a 10, it's like a 6. So you may have to dose fairly heavy and often relative to the 2g tank, but not too much to cause harm. The tricky part is when you transition from DSM to flooded conditions. Usually, co2 is cranked up to help as HC acclimates to being submerged. After all, HC is one of those plants that prefers emersed conditions and that's why it's so CO2/carbon needy.. IME, it also needs nitrates. Anyways, good luck and let us know how it turns out.

Thanks Brian! i really appreciate your informative input. i guess it's gonna have to go through some good old experimentation/trail and error! i am stocking this tank with sakura shrimp and thai micro crabs. should i hold off on putting them in until after HC acclimates with the relatively heavy CO2 dosing?
 
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