PLANTING
Okay! Been waiting for this since early December! I had a bad cold while planting. Less than fun to hang over your aquarium for hours on end with your sinuses going crazy! Anyways!
Plants...Here are the first batch of plants I'll do in my DSM. I will be planting others but I'm ignorant of how they'll do in a DSM. I'll do up a list of my remaining plants and folks are welcome to advise me if they are okay for DSM or not! But for now....
elocharis parvula
hemianthus callichtrichoides "cuba" (HC)
hydrocotyle leucoephala
staurogyne repens
microsorum pteropus
anubia barteri "nana"
glossostigma elantoides
bacopa monnieri
pogostemon helferi
The gloss, e.parvula, HC, staur. repens and hydrocotyle are AquaFlora emmersed plants. Thanks to Joseph Uy of Miyabi Aqua for all those emails! These were purchased at Aquarium's West in early December and I've been sitting on them for weeks. They all did great during the wait. I kept them in their pots and put a grow light over them for a few hours a day.
The long-awaited pogostemon helferi has been sitting in my temporary tank. On my previous build, the MTS ate all my pogo. helf. That could be why I dislike the MTS now! I searched for some replacement plants for a long time. Finally got in on the Tropica shipment at Aquarium's West.
The bacopa, anubias and microsorum were from my previous build. I carefully checked for any remnant of java moss as they came out of the tear down. They've been sitting in my temporary plant tank (DIY Co2 and my mother-in-law's grow lights suspended overhead) for a few weeks and no java moss had returned on these. Phewf! I inspected all "old" plants carefully under the bright lights of my light fixture. No new moss! Also checking for snails/eggs! Clear! I hope. I didn't dip the plants. I hope if I missed some snails/eggs the DSM may do them in. We'll see.
e.parvula went in first. I used almost the whole pot. Used my best kitchen paring knife to slice up the clump. Here's a pic
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This took waaaaay longer than I thought to plant. However, I see one major advantage in a DSM already. It is much much easier to plant without water! The plants stay put! No floaters! When you ease your grip with the tweezers they stay in the substrate! Yaaa! I wiggled the tweezers a bit to work the plantlet down, released the plant slightly and wiggled my tweezers back out again. My aquascaping tweezers are too big for this. I borrowed my mother's fancy little sewing tweezers. They are fine tipped.
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I think the e.parvula took about an hour to do! Back-breaking!
I wasn't quite sure what to do with the hydrocotyle. I planted a few stems at the base of the wood and just draped the rest of the plant on the wood. I'm hoping the roots will gain hold on their own. It's supposed to have vigorous growth so it should be okay if I can keep it wet.
The gloss was a breeze after the e.parvula. I only needed about half the pot. I spaced these out quite far because apparently it is a fast grower too. I'm hoping this plant doesn't become a maintenance nuisance. So three plants are in...Here's a pic. Glosso on the left.
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This all took so long I couldn't finish it in one day. Yet another advantage to DSM! You don't have to have a planting marathon all in one day! Very useful for busy people with large tanks!
Next day the staurogyne repens went in. I'm liking the striking colour of this plant already! This was easy to divide with my knife and easy to plant. I used most of the pot.
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I was feeling more confident in my planting skills by now so tackled the HC next. I had two pots and used it ALL! This was more fiddly to cut up into plantlets. One pot gave me this many plantlets...
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Using those little tweezers, it wasn't too hard to plant. Nice big root portions. I planted them as close together as I could. Just enough space to get the tip of my finger in between the plantlets. The same wiggle technique worked well. The slope wasn't any more difficult to plant than the flat part. Actually, it wasn't too hard to plant this plant. I just laid my finger on the plant gently as I pulled the tweezers out. Here's a close up pic...
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Then came the pogostemon helferi. I have two pots of this but only planted one. I wanted to see how it liked switching from submersed to a DSM. If it goes well, I'll plant the second pot. It was hard to plant because the pot had tipped over in my temporary plant tank and the stems were all bent. Here, the slope helped! The bacopa monnieri was a cinch to plant. I got quite an area covered. I have been growing this plant from about 8 stems originally so it was satisfying to have lots left over. So here is the left side complete (for now)
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Two days later I put in the java fern. I tied it to the wood. I took the wood out to do that. I had to mist it frequently to keep the hydrocotyle happy. Used my husband's fishing line. He helped me tie the knot. Ha-ha, pun intended? We're already married!
The anubias nana went in next. They were not too happy about being yanked out of the water. They got quite wilty, quite quickly. I just wiggled the roots into the substrate. This part of the substrate was very wet. Hopefully they like that. They were kind of a pain to plant because the roots grow the whole length of the rhizome and I could only grab some of them. So far so good. Here is a pic of the anubias looking sad...(the e.parvula is a few days planted here)
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Here is a pic of the java fern in
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That's all the plants for now. Instead of saran wrap I used my versa-top. I had almost no evaporation when the previous build was running. I figured if I jammed the holes in the back with plugs of saran wrap, the seal would be pretty good. One of the holes I left open. It's about 2cm by 2cm and the filter pipe is still hooked there. I have lots of condensation.
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That's a neighbouring house plant that can't believe its good luck with the light fixture so close! It's growing like stink! My lights are on 12 hours/day. Just two of the bulbs.
The plants get misted with some RO water. I have some metricide 14 on order but so far (1 week) I don't have any mould. My toothpicks did get some mould. Maybe from my cold virus? I mist once a day. Especially the anubias, hydrocotyle and java fern. I don't really vent the tank but it smells OK in there. Kind of like visiting a tropical rain forest. Maybe I shouldn't flood it and get some nifty frogs? Haha, no way! I miss my fish!
Wow, long post. More later! Thanks for viewing! Thanks for commenting!
