First off, thanks Tom and everyone else here on the forum for the great site and the great advice. I've poured through the threads on this board and really learned a lot while avoiding many of the pitfalls that I went through when i first tried plants years ago.

Now onto my question... I read and really liked the idea of the dry start up tank so much that I decided to do that with my 55G tank to create a nice bed of Glossostigma, as well as some other assorted hairgrasses and crypts. I planted in flourite gravel, that i then dosed with NPK+ trace. I've been using a 2x55W @6700K AHsupply for lighting, plus the two 15W strips that came with the tank @5000K (figure the more the better for this stage). The lights are on 12 hours a day.

I had some melting, and generally the gloss has not filled in nearly as well as I'd hoped after ~3 weeks. After a little thought, I realized that the lack of growth is probably due to the cold daytime temperatures of my house when no one is home (drops to approximately 60 degrees) for most of the day, and then is about 68 at night.

First off, does this sound reasonable? There was no mention of room temperature in Tom's article, but I'd assume that its expected to be about standard tank temperature.

If this is my problem, would I do better just going about it the normal way with filling the tank and growing from there? And if/when I do fill the tank, what temperature should the water be at? I don't want to melt what gloss I have grown so far, and will most likely need to add more plants to initially outcompete the algae. I'm not sure if I should add water at my room temp (~60s) and gradually heat the water up with a heater or just add ideal temp (~78) and the other plants to outcompete the algae.

I'm a student currently living at home with my parents, so just raising the daytime temp is not really an option.

Thanks alot for your help, and hope I haven't forgotten anything.
Mike

Anyone have any idea, or even an educational guess?

Thanks in advance,
Mike

I'm very curious about this as well. I have just set up a Marineland Eclipse System 6 in a co-workers office and am trying this method.

Actually, I wonder if slowly filling it up via daily misting with a hand sprayer isn't a bad way to go about it. It'll keep the humidity levels up, and opening the top to do this will also allow some air exchange (not sure how important that is, but I would think it to be beneficial). After nearly 1 week since setting it up, there's approximately 0.5in of water above the lowest level of substrate (which is angled back to front, not flat).

I wonder if spraying a weak nutrient solution to be beneficial as well? Would mixing KNO3 and KH2PO4 in one sprayer, and CSM+B in another and rotating them each day be of some benefit? Sort of a "pseudo-EI" misting?

-Jason

Warmer temps = faster growth, if you had a temp of say 80F, or 85F, then the plants grow much much faster, otherwise, you have to wait longer.

The plants in my place are now cooler, but warmer since I took them inside recently.
But growth slows own a fair amount at 10C drop, about 2X as slow.
I suppose you could use a seedling heat mat, they are 20$ or so.


Regards,
Tom Barr

Thanks guys for the input,

I've been adding ferts through the the excess water at the bottom rather than a mister as I'd be wary of burning the plants with ferts being sprayed directly on leaves. I know this is a problem for fertilizing garden plants, and seeing as these are being grown emmersed, I worry about the same problem.

As for the filling, I think I am going to half fill with same temp water, and then heat the water from there, adding the additional plants the next day. This should give minimal time for algae growth while still allowing me to plant and not melt my plants.

Also, I would think it'd be important to start CO2 injection when I submerse my plants so that they don't melt due to lack of CO2 either.

Sound like a decent idea?

I hope I don't mess this up. =/

Mike

Good point about the "burning" with too much fertilizer directly. I wonder if just a very weak solution would help at all. I need to add some CSM+B to the water already present on the bottom of the tank, but I haven't figured out yet how to add that and get even coverage...

If the plants are growing, then filling the tank is just being impatient.
The lights should add heat. What is the temperature in the tank?
An incandescent light will add heat and is inexpensive.

Hey Wiste,
I guess its impatience depending on your viewpoint. I was using the emmersed method of growing because I thought it seemed both a quicker and easier way to grow the plants. Now, having realized its probably slower, I'm less inclined to want to continue doing it.

The tank temperature, after having the lights on all day is 68 F.

Mike

Given proper conditions plants such as glosso will grow rapidly submersed.
If considering the rate of plant growth as a primary condition, then setting up initially as emersed may not result in a quicker setup.

Mike, I've had another look at the thread and it seems to me that the original post focused primarily on the main advantages of growing ground cover plants emmersed which were as follows:

No CO2
No dosing
No worry about fish uprooting it
No algae
No water changes pulling it up before it roots well.
Creates a thick mat that's very well rooted
The transition to submersed is much less problematic
High biomass
Bacteria is formed in the soil

It was mentioned that this would take about 2-3 weeks but later clarified that the time period would vary with the temperature.

The advantages listed above trumps the issue of speed as far as I can see.

If you're going to abandon this approach then half filling the tank is the same as filling it completely so there is no point in developing a strategy for half filling. You'll not outwit algae by half filling. You may or may not get melting of the crypts but so what? That's what crypts do and they grow back if the nutrients and CO2 are added properly.

Once the plants are submerged you'll have to start dosing, and adding CO2 like any other tank regardless of the water level.

Cheers,