how do you plant HC properly

[sovereign51580]

Hi All,

After doing a lot of research I've decided to get some HC (Hemianthus callitrichoides) for my tank, but I'm not sure how to plant it (fortunately, it won't be arriving till Saturday). It's grown potted in rockwool. Recently I skimmed through an aquarium plant book and it said that for rockwool-potted plants, you should just break up the rockwool so that you have a few stems in each piece (I think the book used either marsilea quadrifolia or glossostigma as an example) and bury each piece of rockwool so only the plants are visible.
I also read an article online about how to plant glosso and it suggests that the rockwool be completely separated from the glosso and then plant each glosso separpately with tweezers. I only mention this glosso article because I read somewhere else that HC should be planted like glosso.

So I'm confused! How should HC be planted?

[rich311k]

Seperate it out of the rockwool and plant each plant seperately. Tweezers and a lot of patience help a lot.

[sovereign51580]

Rich, thanks for responding. It looks like that it will be hard to separate individual plants with the roots all so intertwined. Would it still be ok if I planted very small bunches together? I just have a feeling that I tried separating each stem, I'll end up destroying all the roots.

[Squawkbert]

Tease apart as much as possible, the smaller the better. Keep them damp while laying them out (wet paper towel and/or misting).

Long tweezers are best - gently grip root/stem, push way into substrate, gently pull back to appropriate depth (eg: push in Xmm, pull back out 0.5Xmm).

Allocate some time - it will take a while.

[sovereign51580]

Thanks for your input. They should arrive Saturday morning. I'm giving myself the full day to do it. I just got some long tweezers for this. Wish me luck! I'll try to post pics once I'm done.


Tease apart as much as possible, the smaller the better. Keep them damp while laying them out (wet paper towel and/or misting).

Long tweezers are best - gently grip root/stem, push way into substrate, gently pull back to appropriate depth (eg: push in Xmm, pull back out 0.5Xmm).

Allocate some time - it will take a while.

[TwoTankAmin]

Actually, a small tweezer will work better for this plant. You can plant it in small bunches a few cm apart and it will fill in nicely.

I wont matter if the stems have roots or not, just push the bottom into the substrate and they will develop roots.

One warning; if you have fish in the tank that root around the bottom, they may uproot newly planted HC before it can take hold.

[sovereign51580]

Thanks for the info TwoTank. I don't have any fish at all right now so uprooting won't be a problem.