# Low light grass?



## Senior Shrimpo (Dec 4, 2010)

If you want a grassy plant,

try Eleocharis (belem, accicularis, parvula). All look great.

Belem is shortest, it's curly too. Good for small tanks
Parvula is shortish but not as short. Not curvy but very nice looking, good for medium tanks.
Accicularis is tallest; it has very slender, um, leaves? It looks great for a bigger tank.

My accicularis survived all my newbie blunders and in a few months it was carpeting a 10 gallon with 15 watt light bulb. It's pretty wonderous, these grasses don't need high light or co2.


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## lauraleellbp (Feb 3, 2008)

Senior Shrimpo said:


> If you want a grassy plant,
> 
> try Eleocharis (belem, accicularis, parvula). All look great.
> 
> ...


None of those recommendations would work for a tank with this little light and no CO2. There's a huge difference between a 10gal tank under a T8 bulb vs a 55gal tank under T8.

If you're having issues getting dwarf sag to carpet for you, I'm personally rather doubtful that any other carpeting plant will do better without some changes...

Big Als is running a huge sale on their Coralife T5NO fixtures right now- getting one of those to increase your lighting is probably your best bet to get a carpet going in this tank.

Also, what's your substrate? Carpeting plants usually do best in substrates containing nutrients.


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## Senior Shrimpo (Dec 4, 2010)

Laura,

I was just sharing my findings. I've worked with all DHGs except parvula and they're really resilient to everything except algae. The tank didn't have a t8 but I understand your analogy.

I won't say you're wrong because you're clearly more experienced than me and probably know this better. But DHG is so resilient, I assumed it'd spread albeit slowly. It's true if he's not dosing ferts or co2 and has really low light then the plant is not going to grow much. But I've never used dwarf sag, that's my problem. Just from reading online and around here it seems to be a very easy plant to grow... maybe not if your substrate is gravel, from what I'm reading large substrate obstructs growth.

Sorry I can't be a bigger help, I normally do nano tanks (<10 gallons)


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## jsuereth (Dec 21, 2010)

I use DHG in my 10 gallon low-tech. You need to make sure it can get light (keep it away from taller plants) and you'll probably have to dose excell to get it to grow 'faster'. Mine's been up an running for 10 months and has barely carpeted the area I initially put it in (3 pots). However, I do have to trim it every two weeks with regular excell dosing and every 1-2 months without excell.

I really like DHG, but for low-tech I think you may want to grow it dry-start. Once it's established in the tank, it'll be pretty resilient, but it's a very slow grower. I'm debating trying dry-start in my 125G tank I'm setting up. Either that or just mimic Laura's tank because it looks great.


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