So I finally got to the stage where I was happy with the hardscape layout in my new tank and it was time to start planting. Here is an image and a video of the current planting.
I wanted to go through the types of plants I have in here. I have 4 different plant species, 3 of which were purchased as in-vitro stock. That means that they were grown in a kind of hormone jelly in a clinical environment. This ensure that there is no algae, no pest or snails which is a common problem with plants that are grown in most plant farms. The plants turn up in small pots like the one below. You can divide them up a lot, from one pot you can easily get 20 or so small plants.
An example of a in-vitro pot from tropica
The first plant here is Eleocharis acicularis Mini, otherwise known as Dwarf Hairgrass. It is the plant that I have chosen as my carpeting plant and will eventually cover 95% of the soil in the tank. They send out little runners under the soil in order to spread and are easy to trim and keep like a "lawn". They grow a few cm tall.
This plant is Cryptocoryne parva, the smallest of all of the Cryptocoryne plants. It will grow between 3 and 6cm tall and slowly spread out. It needs a lot of light and is pretty slow growing. It's the first time I have tried to grow this plant and will possibly be a bit of a challenge, but we will see. I have planted this around the main focal rock on the mid-right of the tank.
Staurogyne repens is a plant that I have in my other tank, so I just trimmed the tops off and planted some in the new tank. Its a low growing bushy plant which grows up to 10cm tall and spreads out with runners under the gravel when you trim the tops off. I've placed this at the back on the right in the hope that it will cover up some of the pipework.
Bucephalandra micrantha 'Needle Leaf' is an Epiphyte plant. That means it grows attached to wood or rocks as opposed to having it's rootstock planted in the soil. This is a small and slow growing Bucephalandra and i've wedged it between the two rocks in the left foreground of the tank.
I hope you like the look of the tank so far. I'm currently doing daily 50% water changes to keep ammonia levels down while the tank cycles (the soil leaches a small amount of ammonia for the first few weeks). This will help prevent algae during the startup of the tank.
The next update will be when either the plants have grown in, or when I start adding some fauna to the tank.
