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

I manage to get most of the materials that I needed last Sunday (Oct. 5, 2008) and started aquascaping my 10g tank at that same day. Here’s some of the materials that I’ve managed to prepare, most of them are quite far from the sketch that I’ve drawn but the most appealing (IMO) I could find.

1. Driftwood. Got this driftwood from Aquarium Services Kitchener (a.k.a. Big Als Canada).
2. Rocks. Found them on our backyard.
3. Flourite Substrate (black). Bought this from Aquarium Services (a.k.a. Big Als Canada) as well.
4. Compact Flourescent Light. I couldn’t find CFL 20watts bulbs so I just bought Two 6,500k 15 watts CFL bulbs.
5. Cabomba Green, Coffeefolia (anubias), Java Moss and Java Fern. Have them already and still waiting for my groundcover plants that I bought from AquariumPlants.com

Since most of the materials that I need are ready, I started setting up the stage:

While looking for the stone that fits to my liking I tried setting up the stage in our backyard first and here’s what I came up with (see fig. 1).

And when I was certain and satisfied with the positioning I then applied the layout in to my tank (fig. 2 and fig. 3)

(fig. 1)

(fig. 2)

(fig. 3)

4 more plants will arrive tommorow (hopefully) to be added in this 10g tank, these are Pelia (Monosolenium Tenerum), Aponogeton crispus, Dwarf Hairgrass (Eleocharis acicularis), and Myriophyllum tuberculatum. There are 2 more plants that I forgot to order though, one is Riccia Fluitans and HC Cuba (Hemianthus callitrichoides cuba) and since this is most likely the last month of shipments due to winter I may not be able to get those plants till next year spring by then I wonder how will my 10g tank going to look like.