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!.