# Help please! Dwarf Hair Grass question from a n00b...



## PipeRain (Jul 21, 2013)

*TL/DR:"How do you keep dwarf hairgrass in FloraMax substrate long enough to get it to take root?"*

I have bought 12 clumps of dwarf hair grass, separated them into smaller clumps about 1/8" to 3/16" across and inserted them in my substrate deep enough to cover the brown mass (That I assume to be roots) using tweezers, then gently moving substrate back against the base of each clump using the tweezers. Within 24 hours about 25-30% of the plugs will have floated to the surface. This has been going on for 4 weeks and none of the plugs show any sign whatsoever of rooting activity. Almost none of the grass has shown any signs of browning that I am given to understand is common when transferring from immersed to submersed. On the flipside, there is no sign of growth either. The grass is not growing in length, nor is it sending out any runners. The only sign of any activity is large amounts of it floating around the tank, stuck to the filter intake, tangled up in the fern and my aggravation level going off the charts. After two weeks of this, and looking around the net for answers, I decided to try to trim it a bit to see if that would encourage it to root out more or send some runners as well as reduce it's floating mass to help keep it in the substrate. I trimmed about 30% of the length off of a batch of escapees and lo and behold, they float right back up as well.

Does anyone have any sort of useful ideas for keeping the stuff in the substrate? If I could just keep it actually planted I'm sure it would do fine. There is tons of info out there on every aspect of successfully growing dwarf hairgrass except for this one critical point : "Keeping it in the substrate".

Tank stats : 

10 Gallon
2"-2 1/2" of fresh CaribSea FloraMax (Level varies around the tank in no particular pattern)
8 API root tabs broken in half and scattered around the substrate when it was planted 4 weeks ago
46 watts of 6500K (2 26 watt CFL with reflectors , running 11 hours a day on a timer.
Dosed daily with 1 ml API C02 booster
Dosed 3X weekly with 1.5 ml Seachem Flourish
Water temp 80 deg F
PH runs a bit acid, around 6.5-6.8 due to local water conditions (After dosing with Seachem Neutral Regulator)
All other parameters are within normal tolerances
Tank is fully cycled
Old-school Whisper 20 filter set on low to reduce water agitation

There is no sign of algae, I left my 13 watt self-contained UV filter running in the tank for 10 days to cure an algae bloom about three months ago. Other than the Whisper filter there is no source of water agitation, the bubble wall is off and there are no other airstones etc. in the tank.

Tank has 1 male Betta, 1 Albino Cory Cat, 1 Sunset Platy and 4 guppies. They cory doesn't seem particularly interested in the grass, it doesn't spend any inordinate time "Worrying" the grass and even after watching the tank for an hour or two I have yet to see it pull or otherwise disturb the grass. None of the other fish spend any appreciable time around any of the plants. The grass just dislodges and floats up. Oddly enough, almost none of the grass comes up during the day, but when I check the tank in the morning, there is tons of it floating around.

I am not interested in planting in sand as the tank has fish in it and will need to be vacuumed.

Any thoughts overall or specific suggestions would be appreciated, as I am rather tired of spending one to two hours a day re-plugging clumps of grass for a month now.


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## Yo-han (Oct 15, 2010)

First of all, no fish till it rooted. But that advice is a little late and if it is an existing tank than it is always hard. Best thing you can do is insert them into the substrate under an angle. This way they float less easy out of the substrate by their selves. Leaves you with the fish uprooting it. Perhaps you can make a small cage from gaze where the fish can' t get through till it rooted. Or if you've multiple tank, move them temporarily


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## BruceF (Aug 5, 2011)

I use sand in all my tanks I am not sure why you think that is a problem. It is easy to plant in and not a big problem when cleaning the tank. 

Don’t be afraid to plant these plants deeply. They take some time to settle in but planting them deeply doesn’t seem to bother them.


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## HisXlency (Feb 2, 2013)

as stated, plant deeper and give them some time to form roots


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## Byork (Oct 21, 2012)

I have use netting secured all around the area with smooth rocks. It worked well for me in an established tank that had a large school of coriadoras.


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