# Dwarf Hairgrass in a very low-tech 50 gal tank



## gtippitt (Jan 13, 2017)

I would like some advice on Dwarf Hairgrass as a carpet plant for a very-low-tech 50 gallon setup. I'm sorry if my question is a repetition of too many prior posts, but the ones I found were mainly about smaller tanks and low light. Some of the posts said not to even try any carpets without CO2, but others disagreed. I'm wanting to know before making a mess, if Dwarf Hairgrass will grow in the deeper water of a 50 gallon tank with gravel substrate, without CO2 equipment or lots of expense or work?

I've not kept fish in many years, but I found a couple of used 50 gallon tanks cheap at a garage sale and decided to try again. 

I have a 50 gallon tank that is 48*12 and 20 inches deep. 

For lighting I have a 48 inch shoplight with T8 tubes that produce 11,000 lumens at 6500K.

My filtration is an external DIY canister filter using a 5 gallon bucket. With the used aquariums, I got about a gallon each of bio-balls and Seachem Matrix. I layered these with something called "CPR Bio Bale", that looks like plastic pasta, which I bought to fill the 5 gallon bucket.

For substrate, I have about 1 inch of small pea gravel (about 1/4 inch or less in size).

The tank is stocked with 6 each Zebrafish, GloLight Tetra, Cherry Barb, and Golden Barb (2 dozen total).

My fish are healthy with good water quality, but the tank is sort of boring looking. While I love looking at the pics of everyone's beautiful high-tech planted tanks, but I don't want that much work. I got suckered by the woman at Petco, who told me I was buying 3 pots of carpet grass that would spread, but after I got home and read the label on the pots, it was mondo grass that started dying after a month, so I threw it out. I know going to Petco for fish is stupid, but it's the only pet store within an hour drive of me. Since live plants can be shipped easier than fish, I plan to order whatever plants I buy from now on.

I would like to have some low plant(s) that will move with the water current to give the tank a bit more motion. I'd like to avoid adding soil or deeper substrate, as deeper substrates have given me more problems with water quality in the past. Now that the first tank has been running for 2 months, cycled, and healthy, I want to set up the second tank that I've got. I'm planning for a setup similar to this first one, but using black sand and stocking with a dozen neon tetras and half-dozen pygmy cory. 

I'm retired and live on a limited budget, so more expensive lights, CO2 equipment, and the such are a no-go for me. I spent my budget to get really good filter media, since my first priority was good water quality for the health of the fish, without having to worry with/about the tank too much. Would Dwarf Hair Grass grow and spread in the 1 inch of gravel I have? I notice that many people with the best plants seem to have the lower tanks, like J-POND's very pretty one. Will enough enough light get through 18 inches of water with the lights I have now? 

I already had a pair of shop-lights that I've used for plant seedlings, and they seemed to work well as grow lights for tomato and pepper seedlings. They each have 4 T8 tubes. I've installed new bulbs that are 2800 lumens at 6500K.

Since I'm not wanting to add much work to my normal maintenance of water changes, would Dwarf Hairgrass be easy? if not, should I get something else or just be happy without plants? I'd rather stay with rock and fish than add "viride plasticus". :smile2:

Thank you for your advice,
Greg


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## Gad (Apr 6, 2008)

I've only used CO2 for a short period a few years ago. It worked great, but if you're patient and your lighting is good you should have no problem. I'm growing dwarf hairgrass in a 4 gallon nano now with LED lighting on 8 hours per day.
.


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## Freemananana (Jan 2, 2015)

I think dwarf hair grass may be a stretch. I'm no carpet expert, but it is pretty recommended to use CO2 from what I've read time and time again. Not to say you can't add some and see where it goes. However, a low tech tank like yours has a lot of options. Namely, amazon swords and crypts. Swords are pretty big and will flow nicely in your current. They will also take up some of that height you have there. Crypts, wendtii in particular, are really easy going plants. They grow in low light and add some color. Both of these will do fine in your gravel.

Petco has some decent anubias nana and amazon swords from what I've seen. Both will grow fine in your tank. Look for java fern and crpyts as well. Anubias and java fern don't require soil at all and can even be tied to rocks or driftwood in the tank. 

If you want a low lying plant, dwarf sag works well in low tech. It spreads like wildfire after it sets in too. I've had great success with it in lower light without CO2.

Lastly, floating plants. They are the easiest plant in the world to grow and they vastly improve water quality. Frogbit and duckweed are very common, cheap, options. A handful will cover the surface of your tank in a month. Then you just scoop it out and give it away or trash it. Many members give it away. Check the "ROAK" section to find some 'free' beginner plants. I say free because most people ask for shipping charges to be covered. 

For information on your lighting, check out the sticky in the lighting sub forum.










It would seem your T8s will more than do the job. Two bulbs in a normal reflector a couple inches above the tank will do wonders. You'd probably be fine with a single bulb as well, right on top of the glass in some sort of reflector.


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## MtAnimals (May 17, 2015)

I have really good luck with dwarf sag carpeting all over in my low tech tanks.I haven't tried hair grass,as I understand it wants a finer substrate and I'm using eco-complete.

BTW,I think from the dimensions of your tank,it's actually known as a 55 gallon,even though It seems to hold closer to 50 gallons.


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## gtippitt (Jan 13, 2017)

*Thank you for all of your suggestions*

I'll read some more on the alternatives you've mentioned. I liked the idea of a simple carpet of the hairgrass that swayed in the current, but was afraid it might not work well for me from what I had read.

Freemananana : This is my first time on this website, so forgive my ignorance, what is "ROAK". I'd rather pay someone the same amount for extra plants from a health aquarium than get ones grown in unknown conditions that may introduce pests.

MTanimals : It is funny what you said about 55 vs 50. The woman who sold them to me said they were 55 gallon, but when I got home and measured them, I thought she had made a mistake by measuring the outside dimensions including its frame, which would be 55, but its inside dimensions excluding the plastic frame are only 50 gallon. I laughed to myself at the time and thought perhaps she knew I was planning to have a 5 gallon bucket for a canister filter hidden under the tank when I got it set up.

My past aquariums year ago were a 10 gallon where I would keep a male Betta and a 50/55 gallon with 4 comet goldfish that lived to be 18 years old. They would eat anything green that got near them, so I never got much experience with plants with them. After having them for years, you begin to recognize their individual personalities. They were lots of fun and are incredibly smart. I even taught them a trick to show friends, where they appeared to know how to read and play blackjack. I trained them by drawing two playing cards putting them against the glass before feeding them. If one was a face card, I fed them on the end of the tank where I had a yellow post-it that said "STAY". On the other end of the tank was a blue post-it that said "HIT", where I would put the food if neither card was a face card. After only a week, as soon as I put up the two cards, they would race to the correct end of the tank and wait to be fed. Whenever friends visited, they always wanted to see them perform. They were never smart enough to split or double, and they would hit on 17-20 whenever there were no facecards, but it was a cute trick. 

In the 10 gallon for a Betta, I had several stalks of lucky bamboo and lots of duckweed. Besides improving water quality, duckweed is super for preventing algae. It covers the top of the water and soaks up lots of the phosphates, nitrates, and dissolved organics between water changes. Whenever the duckweed would begin to get too thick, so the Betta couldn't find his food, I'd scoop out a cup full and dump it in the goldfish's tank. They would go after the duckweed like sharks feeding.

Thanks,
Greg


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## Freemananana (Jan 2, 2015)

RAOK is a Random Act Of Kindness, AKA, giving stuff away. Usually reserved for fast growing plants that don't really have much value or actually acts of kindness because people are just feeling nice. It's one of the better parts of the forum IMO. I've given away lots of stuff there and it's a blast. There are raffles sometimes, guessing games, stories where the original poster picks the winner, etc.


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## Progen (Oct 31, 2016)

From limited but personal experience, I say your setup CAN grow dwarf hairgrass. I have a few clumps in my cat's drinking pool. Now don't mistake that for just a bare pool of water. There are fishes, driftwood and plants inside with a running HOB but no CO2 injection and the only light is that bit from the window beside BUT the hair grass is still alive after like 2+ months. It's not growing but it's definitely not dead so that's why I think it'll flourish in your setup. It may be slower than a high tech one but if you''re the patient kind, go ahead!


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## AbbeysDad (Apr 13, 2016)

Dwarf Hairgrass like many of the 'carpet plants' typically grow in shallow water with very bright light. You MAY be able to pull it off with your shop lights with an extended photoperiod, or maybe not. More often, carpet plants are grown in high tech tanks with bright light, CO2 and high(er) levels of ferts. However, it doesn't cost that much to try.
I tried growing hairgrass in my 60g, 24" deep tank. It didn't have a chance (and I gave up) as the fish kept uprooting it!


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## Agent69 (Oct 9, 2013)

Dwarf hair grass will survive but carpet hella slow in low tech. I've had it in my 10 gallon low tech for about a month now and I'm barely seeing signs of growth it started sending a couple runners


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## klibs (May 1, 2014)

firstly I would strongly recommend AGAINST using gravel as substrate. From what I have seen from others DHG basically has no chance without good medium + light and CO2 unless you have a good substrate. coarse substrates (as mentioned by one of the above posters) does not play well with delicate plants with fine roots (hc, grass, etc...). The grass needs to dig in and take hold with its tiny roots. if it can't do this is will not want to spread

IMO you need to use dirt capped with something fine like blasting sand or something like that OR use something like ADA aquasoil that has lots of nutrients.

there are some solid examples of tanks on here without CO2 but with decent amounts of light (for low tech) that carpet DHG pretty well. basically all of them use dirt and/or aquasoil as far as I can remember. They also have pretty high levels of light and are very well maintained tanks (usually smaller tanks that are shallow). This is far more difficult to achieve in a larger tank like your 55g as you will have quite strong light in other areas of the tank just to make sure your DHG (which contributes very little to your plant-load) has enough to grow.

also, from my experience with hair grass (in a high tech setup) it takes a while for it to start to spread. I didn't see anything happen for many weeks and then all of a sudden it started to spread quite quickly. so don't give up until you're a few months in and are not seeing anything happen


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## Bananableps (Nov 6, 2013)

I use DHG in most of my tanks, all of which are low tech dirted. Growth is uncontrollable. In addition to trimming, every month I have to pull DHG out of the substrate to keep it from overwhelming my other plants. It becomes an absolute weed in dirt.

I really need to get a better camera so I can have decent pics of my tank, but in the meantime...










Here's a clump of DHG I'm trying to sell on CL. The shiny round thing is a quarter.


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