Hi Chris, welcome to the forum
I was thinking of pearlweed for the carpet. I am planning on getting a fertilizer substrate for the bottom layer and seachem flourish for the liquid fertilizer. Thank you for the reccomendations, I really appreciate it.Hi Chris, welcome to the forum
In terms of getting a carpet going which plants were you looking at doing? If you're not sure of names were you thinking of a grass type plant or one of the small leaved plants like Monte Carlo?
Carpets can be quite hard to get going without Co2 but it is possible. You really want a nutrient rich substrate - I've started using Wio Eonian as its a long term substrate and you don't get the ammonia spike at the beginning. But I'd recommend capping it with a sand as its quite a coarse texture especially for fish. Having a good liquid fertiliser will also help, I use Tropica Nutrition (the brown one without nitrates).
It's worth mentioning though that carpets can limit the species of fish you keep so make sure your fish are ok without access to sand for example. Cory cats are a good example as they like to dig in the sand and filter it for food so will disturb your plants a bit in a way that means they won't fully cover the substrate.
Another option if you want to have that aquascaped look is to have a sand substrate at the front and plant a few foreground plants without the full carpet - I think this looks more natural to be honest. You can always mix in a hand full of gravel around bigger rocks to make it look more natural too.
Wills
Could work ok pearl weed does best in softer water I’d definitely look at the wio substrate.
You will have so cut the pearlweed a lot so it it starts to spread horizontaly. Otherwise it will shoot straight up. I find putting dwarf hairgrass in small clumps around the hardscape and in gaps, and that looks really good to me. But once a pearlweed carpet is actually a carpet it doesn't look really nice.
Hello Chris. Good question. I think not on the carpet plants. There are some nice looking substrate pebbles that I find as attractive as having a carpeting plant. The pebbles are much easier to vacuum and you can have a variety of bottom plants like Anubias and Java Fern. You can include small pieces of driftwood and some rocks that I think look better than carpet plants. But, that's my opinion. Here's a photo of a tank with the pebbles and just a couple of Anubias plants. The grey pebbles really work with the green plants.
Thank you for giving me an idea with the hairgrass, I will think about trying that!
I like the design of the tank. I really appreciate the ideas and I will think of that while designing my tank!
