Planting a Foreground

first some background. My main planted aquarium has been running for two years and has gone through many changes over that time. Initially the tank had a hair-grass, microsword and Sagittaria foreground but over time this has disappeared leaving the front of the aquarium bare sand.

full tank shot with old light and no foreground

There are a few reasons I lost my foreground plants, one was lighting. The aquarium was lit by two 30watt LED security lights. This worked OK until one of the lights started to flash, so was removed. With only one light the foreground plants struggled as there was only enough light in the centre and many of the crypts in this area started to shade other plants.

Another reason my old foreground plants disappeared was the presence of three stiphodon gobbies. These were great fun to watch and ate a lot of algae. The problem was there burrowing under the substrate. They did this a lot which dug up most of the foreground plants on a regular basis. This constant digging-up stopped the plants flourishing.

Recently upon seeing an old picture of my aquarium I decided I would like to grow a foreground carpet once again. Firstly to solve the lighting problem, I have installed a purpose made aquarium LED fixture over the aquarium. This not only increases the overall brightness but also gives a much more evenly distributed light.

Next I removed the stiphodon, fun to watch as they were, there constant digging was annoying. I also removed many of the other fish as I fancied a change. As well as the aforementioned gobbies I removed galaxy rasbora, redline rasbora (very nice but never came out of hiding no matter what I did), rasbora hengeli, a plakat (short fin) Siamese fighter and various odd fish that I collected over the years. I decided to leave the cherry shrimp, amano shrimp, bristlenose catfish and pygmy corries. I have also added some tiger endler males and various guppy females.

The aquarium was now ready to plant. I chose to use eleocharis (hairgrass), hemianthus callitrichoides and pogostemon helferi. These three varieties have a very different growth habit, leaf shape and overall look. I have had a hairgrass and pogostemon carpet in this aquarium before. The conditons may not be good enough for the Hemianthus but I will give it a try (normally prefers stronger light and additional CO2).

Hairgrass                                                     Hemianthus

As can be seen in the pictures above, when you buy potted aquarium plants they come tightly packed in there pots. From my experience when plants are left like this and planted whole they end up yellowing and dying. The only way I have found to grow these plants into a carpet is to separate these plants into very small pieces and spread them over a larger area. This gives each individual plant enough light and space to establish and spread.

Individual Hairgrass plant.        Hairgrass planted over wide area.

Hemianthus spread out.              Pogostemon spread out.

Overall aquarium shot

Now its just a waiting game to see it fill in. The hairgrass and pogostemon should fill in both ends, and hopefully the hemianthus will carpet the centre.