Tropical Fish Keeping banner

Foreground and "carpet" plants

18K views 6 replies 5 participants last post by  fish_4_all 
#1 ·
Hi, I am looking for some suggestions on smaller plants that one can use in the foreground and/or bottom of the aquarium. I have some pretty plants along the back and sides, but the front looks a little barren, even with the driftwood I have there. Any ideas? I'm looking for something easy and with low light (I have 70 watts on my 46-gal). Thanks!

Mary
 
#2 ·
ok you need something that propogates with runners, the popular choices are tennelus hairgrass and glossostigma- tennelus is the easiest but as its a sword it grows up aswell as long so the carpet is always changing, hairgrass is nicer and you can give it a different look with a chop of your scissors, glosso is a lttle more needy, and you need goo quality water as its a magnet ofr algae.

Good luck, need any more quetions answering let me know.
 
#3 ·
Dwarf sagittaria, Echinodorus tenellus, Riccia fluitans(to be tied with a mesh on a flat rock) and Javan moss are all I can suggest.
 
#4 ·
forgot about things that can be tied- if you want a cheat to tying and grafts, use hair nets, just rip out the elastic first, put the riccia/moss on the pebble or rock and then wrap the net around, its more even than using cottong and gives a bushier appearance when the plant starts to grow out, you get 4 for 80p and one net will do 4 large pebbles- just a lil tip i was given once thought i should pass it on!
 
#5 ·
Elatines Triandra, Hemianthus Callitrichoides, Aquatic Clover, crypt lucens or parva are a litte larger but stay kinda flat to the substrate with higher light.

All will work for a foreground plant. Riccia is a good choice but requires a bit of maintenance as it grows out of the netting or whatever you use to hold it down. HC grows well but you really need a fine substrate like Eco
Complete, Black Onyx Sand or other sand otherwise it is really hard to keep in place. The E. triandra is a good choice as it is easier to get to stay down in gravel as well as the clover.

One thing I should mention is that a foreground plant requires a little more light than most other plants of the same category. I didn't see how much lighting youu have so I can't say if you can grow them or not.
 
#7 ·
I would have to say, now that I saw your lighting, that a ground cover plant is going to be really tough to get to grow. Less than 2w/g and a taller bowfront tank makes it even tougher. If you really want to grow a nice foreground plant I would suggest more lighting, probably 100-150 watts, although you could get away with a little less if you get CO2 going in the tank.

I have 33 watts over my two 10 gallon tanks and I can barely grow anything that requires medium-high to high light. Thankfully the only thing I have is R. Rotundafolia that is suffering and it has one of the higher light requirements.

You could try Crypt Lucens or Parva but neither is going to stay low with that much lighting. There is always the mosses which will grow in pretty much any lighting and with a little scaping will stay down low for a carpet effect.

Sorry I missed your lighting before.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top