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Hairgrass really not doing well. Advise Please?

Emyr

Member
Joined
20 Jul 2011
Messages
343
Location
London
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The hairgrass has been in place about 5 months now and is not growing very quickly at all or spreading into a carpet which was what I was trying to achieve.

60L
X2 24W T5 bulbs plus 15W aquaFX unit.
Flourite black + flourite black sand.
Pressurized co2
Rena xp4
Dosing Seachem excel, iron, potassium, flourish, nitrogen, phosphorus, trace

Low Nitrates, Low phosphates. RO Water. PH of 6.5

Is there anything I can do to speed the growth up? It doesnt even look very green and healthy but all my other plants including HC does.

Thanks.
 
Hi,
Low Nitrates, Low phosphates. RO Water. PH of 6.5
In a planted tank, low nitrates and low phosphates are not a good thing as ou are starving your plants of the most important nutrients. If you are using RO water then you would probably need to dose a lot more. How much nitrate and phosphate are you adding over a week?
Have you got good flow around all of the hair grass?
 
My Nitrate levels are at roughly 10-15 mg/L and phosphates at roughly 5.0 mg/L. So not that low. All my plants are doing well and so I don't think there is a shortage of those nutrients in the tank. I dose a quarter of a cap of Nitrogen and Phosphorus once a week. I was keeping nitrates relatively low to make sure the reds and purples remain in my Alternanthera reineckii and rotala indica.

Reasonably flow although because the hairgrass is low down it is a bit of a deadspot, a fair amount of debris gathers there, I normally brush it with my hand occasionally to move the stuff off it. not loads of dirt just some debris. I am about to purchase a powerhead to keep everything moving even more, I just started a thread asking about which size one to get.
 
SuperWen said:
Emyr said:
Thanks. Have no done that now and hopefully we will see it develop. Does anyone have any other suggestions?
Inject Fe tablet underneath will boost HG growth as well, because HG loves substrate with rich iron

+1 on some root tabs or root ferts.. flourite black sand is nice to plant in and looks good, but does not contain many nutrients..
 
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