Planting new plants into an existing carpet.

[michael woods]

Hi all,

I'm looking for a bit of advice concerning my ada 60-p. Currently I have a mountain scape using seiryu stones with a lush carpet of micranthemum monte carlo. The micranthemum covers the entire bottom of the tank but my scape is lacking a bit of height. So, I decided to purchase some stem plants including pogostemon erectus from the guys at tgm. My question is, how do I go about planting the new plants? I'm using the full ada substrate system and in terms of livestock I've got 10 harlequins and 6 amino shrimp in there. The only two ways I see are to just trim the micranthemum and plant the stems straight in or, preferably, trim sections of the carpet out and plant? If anyone has any recommendations then they will be greatly appreciated. The tank is 6 months old and yes, I realise I should have probably planned the plants better.

 

[Tim Harrison]

Well...mostly I just stick them in and let them fight it out to a degree. I think you end up with a more natural look that way. But obviously trimming is also desirable depending what look you're trying to achieve and to prevent die off polluting your tank.

 

[michael woods]

Thanks for your reply, Troi. Yeah it's the die off that I'm concerned about so I was going to give a little trim and cut a small square for each but wanted to see if anybody had any previous experience. Only thing with monte carlo is the number of small leaves that get everywhere and through any net so either way I think it'll be a big clean up op.