# How to plant Hemianthus micranthemoides (pearlweed)?



## gnatster (Mar 6, 2004)

Picked up a heck of a nice portion of H. micranthemoides at a local auction today. How do I plant this stuff? Do I want to separate each strand out of the large clump and then plant each one? Horizontally? Vertically? Bury each end of strand? Lay them out in rows, a crossing pattern? 

Sorry for so many questions at once.

Thanks,


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## HeyPK (Jan 23, 2004)

I would take tweezers and poke in short single strands or several strands in bunches into the gravel. It helps if the gravel is fine, rather than coarse. With good lighting each strand should do a lot of spreading horizontally.


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## SCMurphy (Jan 28, 2004)

Nathan, 

If I remember, the clump is pretty thick, you could just hold it to the bottom and sprinkle some gravel on it to hold it down till it roots. Otherwise, just seperate out 5 or 6 strands at a time and tweezer them in.


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## bharada (Apr 17, 2004)

When I got mine I formed five bunches of maybe five stems each. These were 3-4" stems. I planted these bunches (vertically, like a stem plant) about and inch apart in the front corner of my tank. This is what it looks like five weeks later...










The left corner is now about 8" high and the spread to the right is going on 14".

With good light and water conditions (CO2 + ferts) it won't make much difference how you plant it, it'll grow like, well, a weed.  But pearlweed will grow more horizontally under higher light levels. I've got almost 5wpg over my 40 gal tank so it really has spread a lot laterally. If you keep pushing the stems flat they'll root that way even under med light.


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## Error (Apr 16, 2004)

I clump mine up and just shove it halfway into the substrate. It balloons out and starts to creep pretty quickly.


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