How to: easy carpet in your aquarium. Dry start method!

Beautiful, green and very dense carpet!
Something that all fish keepers dream of   and possibly the best part of beautiful 
planted tanks. But it's difficult,   very difficult to create and basically reserved 
or very advanced fish keepers. Right? Wrong! Give me just few minutes of your time and I will   explain everything because it's 
much easier than you might think.  Before we start, a little explanation from my 
side. This was supposed to be a part of much   bigger build video for the tank that you can 
see right now. And that video is still coming   later. But because I read a lot of comments and 
questions about exactly that topic I decided   to make this video about carpeting only.

So 
this is what we're gonna focus on right now. Okay let's get to work! We obviously gonna 
need some tank. Size in this case doesn't   matter at all. You can grow a carpet pretty 
much everywhere. What actually matters is   the substrate that we're gonna use. If you want 
to have a dense and very healthy carpet I would   really recommend to use active substrate. For 
this one I used Advanced Soil Shrimp. We don't   need a lot of it. Just one or two centimeters to 
cover bottom of the tank. In general carpeting   plants are quite small and they don't have 
huge root system so it's going to be fine.   And now we're gonna jump ahead 
straight to the planting of our carpet. In this case I use Eleocharis parvula. 
It looks like teeny tiny grass and it   grows perfect as a carpet. So what you 
have to do with it is divide it into   very small parts.

Those small parts can be 
really tiny. Don't be afraid of anything.   I know that right now those plants don't 
even have roots. That's okay! And I know   that you're afraid that everything is going 
to float once you fill the tank with water They won't! Just divide your plant into teeny 
tiny parts and spread it around your substrate   exactly like I'm showing you right now. The 
better the spread of your plant the better   your carpet will be. And it's also going to 
spread much faster.

If you're gonna create   big pieces of this plant and plant them only in 
a few places, you're gonna create islands – not   carpet! They're gonna connect eventually, 
but it's going to take a lot of time. So this is how it's supposed to look like 
more or less. Small pieces of the plant   spread evenly around the tank. And by the way 
you don't have to use exactly that plant. Just   use whenever carpeting plant you want. The 
approach is pretty much exactly the same.  And now what we're gonna do is NOT fill 
it with water. Just spray your carpet   a little bit with water and cover the 
tank with plastic foil. That's it! And   the only equipment that you need right now is 
light. And this is what we call – Dry Start! For the next weeks what you have to do is 
open the foil from time to time and spray   your carpet with water.

Don't do anything 
else. The only thing that you have to do   is keep the moisture in the tank and let 
the carpet spread and grow. This is why   I mentioned that you don't have to be worried 
about floating or lack of roots. So what your   plant is doing right now is developing very 
strong healthy roots underneath the substrate.   They are hooking themselves to the substrate 
and they are not going to float, no chance. But because you have no water there is no chance 
to develop algae! So if you think about this,   you can use very strong light during this 
process. Your plants are already planted   in very rich substrate. They have 
absolutely everything they need and   they don't have to fight with algae! 
So it's a perfect scenario for them.  And only one week later you can already see 
the progress.

The carpet is much more dense   and most important you can already see some 
runners. That means that the roots are already   developed and the plants are holding tightly to 
the substrate and you're ready to flood the tank. You can see from above how big is 
the difference. Before. And after!  And when I filled the tank with water I 
had zero floating plants. So everything   was already hooked. Entire carpet is heavily 
rooted and it's growing like crazy. So after   filling the tank with water all I have to do 
right now is do a regular water changes. At the   very beginning especially with active substrate 
is very important. But already the plant mass   for this tank is very big so it's quite easy to 
fight off any algae. The carpet is very dense,   very green, very healthy and is growing like 
crazy. And because of that I have minimal   problems with algae. Of course there will be 
some at the very beginning, but this is normal   and it's much easier for me to fight it off. 
So as I mentioned full build video for this   tank is coming.

So if you want to see a FINAL 
result for this – maybe you should subscribe? I hope you learned something from today and 
you are much more confident that you can do   your own carpets for your tanks. 
It's easy! Don't be afraid of it,   try it out! But for now thank you very much for 
watching! And as always see you in the next one!.

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