"Easy" Foreground Plant

[armthehomeless]

I'm planning on converting one of my 30 gallon tanks into a planted shrimp tank. What I want people's opinions on is this: what is the easiest foreground plant to grow for a novice like myself? Currently I have a 36" Coralife single PC fixure with a 6700K bulb (96 watts) over a tank that is 16" tall and will have Aquasoil Amazonia substrate. I currently have Whisper 4o and Whipser 60 (HOB) running on the tank, but will probably switch to a canister.

I was thinking about doing one of two things:

• having this be the only plant and adding some type of rock or petrified wood
  add branchy driftwood and attach some needle-leaf java fern to it

Thoughts? Opinions? Will CO2 be necessary? I'm going pressurized if it is...
I was originally going to do dwarf hairgrass, but can easily be swayed...

A bit of my inspiration:

and the third picture down on this website:

http://www.mynatureaquariums.com/soon/index.html

[mahoro]

Re: "Easy" Foreground Plant

you can go for blyxa japonica or micro swords...as long as they get good amount of lights with nothing blocking them, they will be okay without co2... but their growth will be sloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooow....  and looks different then the co2 counter part...

[Delock]

Re: "Easy" Foreground Plant

I like the tank on the website. I think we could kidnapped the guy who put that tank together..

[Tiapan]

Re: "Easy" Foreground Plant

yeah and you could use Tropheus as the bait.

[Navarro]

Re: "Easy" Foreground Plant

Stop looking and set a day; I have what you need just let me know.
Cheers,
Luis

[HoustonFishFanatic]

Re: "Easy" Foreground Plant

Tim, the dwarf hairgrass layout can be doable with Aquasoil., 96W PC  and Co2 . The hair grass might grow slightly taller.
I would recommend Marsilea hirsuta. I have a small patch if you need some starter nodes.
Thanks
Bhushan
Got ninj'd by Luis.

[armthehomeless]

Re: "Easy" Foreground Plant

I'll talk to you on Saturday, Luis. Thanks!

Bhushan, thanks for your input. How tall would you think the hairgrass would grow uner the given conditions?

[spyke1969]

Re: "Easy" Foreground Plant

nice!!

[HoustonFishFanatic]

Re: "Easy" Foreground Plant

I'll talk to you on Saturday, Luis. Thanks!

Bhushan, thanks for your input. How tall would you think the hairgrass would grow uner the given conditions?

probably 6-8" for E. acicularis.

[Mzungu]

Re: "Easy" Foreground Plant

My vote would be for either dwarf hairgrass or micro sword. I think the java fern will work wonderfully.

[mahoro]

Re: "Easy" Foreground Plant

doesn't  dwarf hairgrass needs lots of co2 and light?

[crudnugget]

Re: "Easy" Foreground Plant

Dwarf Hairgrass should not have a problem growing in a 30gal 16" deep with 96w PC lighting.  If you get E. acicularis, it will grow a bit taller thank another species, E. parvula.  The parvula will stay shorter, around 3-4 inches.  Any kind of hairgrass will spread much faster than microsword.  

As far as the foreground goes, with your lighting you should be able to grow pretty much whatever you'd like, and CO2 will help a lot but is not 100% necessary.

Marsilea minuta is one of the easier ones to grow, it looks kind of like glosso.  Never seen it locally, I got some from a guy on plantedtank.net's forums.  I'd recommend glosso or HC if you do CO2.

[armthehomeless]

Re: "Easy" Foreground Plant

Thanks. I ordered a 10lb. cylinder Tuesday and should be picking up a regulator this Friday. I appreciate all those that have helped me in one way or another to get this far. I'm excited to get this thing up and running. I'd hate to mess things up. I put my substrate  (Power Sand/Amazonia) and driftwood together yesterday. It's just a waiting game until then...

What I have so far:

[spyke1969]

Re: "Easy" Foreground Plant

looks good

[fishlady]

Re: "Easy" Foreground Plant

this will be sooo cool to watch...please keept the updated pics coming......