fish keeping & aquatic plant care

A couple weeks ago I’ve learn something new about aquascaping and aquatic gardening, this is called the “Dry Start” method.

The method is quite simple, to grow aquatic plants emersed, keep in mind though that not all aquatic plants can be grown emersed. There’s a lot of benefits that I liked with this method and below are as follows:

1. Primarily low cost
2. Avoidance to sudden algae attack (common problem with start up stages of a submersed setup)
3. No CO2 required
4. No dosing required
5. No water changes (because there’s nothing to change)
6. Plants will develop a far more stronger root system

Dry Start Method Setup

There’s only few materials needed for this method, one major though is the substrate. The substrate has to be very rich in nutrients to provide the goodies that your aquatic plants needs.

Substrate I’ve used potting soil with very little mixture of clay. Not the ones commercially available flourite substrate, I actually just dig out some from our backyard. The reason why I used this as my primary substrate is so that it has all the nutrients for the plants need to thrive. Aquarium Gravel or Sand You can use either gravel or sand to place at the top of the potting soil so that when your tank is ready to be submersed the soil is contained at the bottom of the tank. Driftwood and Rocks You may want to add some rocks or driftwood to improve its overall look. Aquatic Plants I don’t have a full list of aquatic plants that can be grown emersed but some of the popular ones are: Hemianthus calitrichoides Cuba Marsilea sp. Cryptocoryne sp. Dwarf Hair Grass Java Moss Christmas Moss