# Black sand planted aquarium.



## fishophile (Feb 6, 2012)

Depends on your lighting. S repens looks nice in larger tanks. I'd look into glosso, even though I'm not having the best luck with it.


----------



## klibs (May 1, 2014)

FYI it will be hard to carpet a tank without CO2, good amount of light, and ferts.

Easiest ones I think are chain sword and maybe s repens.


----------



## burr740 (Feb 19, 2014)

Crypt parva might do pretty well.

Im growing some s repens in a 20L with med light, sand sub and Excel @ 2x daily rec dosage. It is very healthy, but grows really really slow. Also have about 4 sprigs of pigmy chain sword in there. It's too early to tell on that, but it appears to be headed in the same direction as the stauro.

Sand is great texture-wise, only thing is being totally inert, it helps to add some root ferts. For small carpet type plants I use tweezers and push individual balls of Osmocote plus down around each sprig when I first plant something.

In general though, I agree with what klibs said



klibs said:


> FYI it will be hard to carpet a tank without CO2


----------



## kman (Dec 11, 2013)

^^ I assume you don't mean Crypt Parva as a carpeting plant, right?

Real carpets are _really_ tough without co2. With a dirted tank there's a chance, but it's still not easy.


----------



## burr740 (Feb 19, 2014)

kman said:


> ^^ I assume you don't mean Crypt Parva as a carpeting plant, right?


? Not in the sense of growing a carpet out of a half a dozen sprigs like glosso or HC, etc, but if you start out with a lot of it...













plantbrain said:


>


----------



## onlycrimson (Sep 7, 2010)

That Crypt carpet looks wonderful IMO.


----------



## chad320 (Mar 7, 2010)

Dwarf Hairgrass 'Belem' does well in sand.


----------



## haril (Feb 17, 2015)

Pygmy chain swords are very undemanding and I have grown them under medium lighting in plain golden river sand or fine gravel and they did carpet pretty easily. Dwarf sags are another option in my experience. I did have DIY yeast CO2 though.


----------



## RedIrocZ-28 (Oct 24, 2006)

I have HC as a carpet plant, no CO2, no ferts, it's doing just fine spreading out. I have 110watts of CF lights 25" above the substrate. I started with a 2"x2" patch about 2 months ago, and it is about 4"x5" by now. I'm not trying to break any speed records here. It's growing slowly, but it is growing in nice and thick.


----------



## 10kredline (Nov 6, 2014)

I also have black sand and HC for the carpet and this is also at 2 months but with good lighting, co2 and ferts.








[/URL][/IMG]


----------



## Verivus (Jan 6, 2015)

Monte Carlo. Mine seems to be doing just fine without pressurized co2.


----------

