carpeting plants and inert substrate

[peter1979]

I have been struggling with my first tank for a few months now. Its a nano 30 litre jobbie. I have FE CO2 running and dose 1.25ml of tropica plus every day with 1 week water changes of around 30-40%. I have anubias nana, java fern, java moss, blyxa japonica, hygrophila difformis, rotala sp., bolbtis heteroclita, cryptocoryne wendtii and pennywort.
I have inert gravel as my substrate as i think this is my main problem. I am struggling to grow any kind of carpeting plant. I first tried dwarf vhair grass, but this turned brown and died off slowly. I then tried glosso and this seems to be going the same way. Is this because of the gravel? To add to this, i have a 18W power light over a 30cm cube tank on for 7 hrs a day.

Admittedly i have probably bitten off more than i can chew with a mixturte of a nano tank ( i had been pre warned these are harder to negotiate for a newbie, but space was limited to a small corner on my desk) pressurised CO2 (maybe i should have gone simple to start) and too many types of plants in one go.

peter

 

[ceg4048]

... carpeting plant....turned brown and died off slowly...

Poor CO2/flow causes this. Inert substrate has nothing to do with this failure mode. Improving the injection rate (or adding Excel) or improving the flow/reworking the distribution scheme will resolve this issue.

Cheers,

 

[murph]

Do you ever get tired of giving the same advice ceg? I think from now on this will be my automatic reasoning behind anything that goes wrong in the tank.

I think I've finally unplugged from the matrix!

 

[ceg4048]

I'd just like to have 10p for every time I gave that advice.

You are "The One" Neo... 8)

Cheers,

 

[peter1979]

i had guessed this might have been the reason so i upgraded the filter to an eheim 2213 external, added lily pipes as the spray bar way too big for such a small tank.
I have moved around the pipes to different locations, and upped the bubble rate for the co2. My drop checkes is always green. It stays green all night too, which i cant really understand.
I'll move it around some more.
thanks for the advice, as a novice im sorry if im going over old stuff, but i appreciate the time you guys take to help out the new people like me.

 

[LondonDragon]

If you have a look through my Rio journal, link in the sig, you will see you can grow carpets in just plain gravel. Like Clive says, you just need the right amount of light, CO2, flow and ferts to make it all work, if one is missing then it won't work, most of the issues people have is too much light and not enough CO2.