Cory & Carpet?

[SoapDoctor]

Corys like to root around in the substrate for food right?

If I were to carpet a tank, lets say with dwarf hair grass or something, would the corys still be able to do their thing between the plants or would a fully carpeted tank screw them up completely?

If so, since most of these water plants are weeds and I expect them to infest like weeds, is there a trick to keeping stuff from growing in certain spots long term? In flower beds they used to, and probably still do, put black visquene down to keep out weeds, is there an aquarium equivalent?

 

[mesto]

IME, in the battle between cories and DHG, cories are the natural winners. They can uproot it pretty easily. Also, if you aren't injecting CO2 you may not get out of control weed-like growth from DHG in an aquarium.

I have a kind of carpet, and there are rhizomes spreading all between the hair plug plantings. It grows pretty slow though, in my case I'm pretty sure it's due to not using CO2. But anyway they coexist. The cories push their way through and dig up a ramet or two here and there occasionally. I may never get the perfect iwagumi carpet but that's ok with me.

 

[SoapDoctor]

I'm actually looking into doing co2, still in the planning phase, which is sort of why I was wondering. I don't know that I'll go DHG or something else but it was the general idea of it.

I guess if they have no problem uprooting stuff then they should be fine, my plantings might not be. If I happened to find something a little more hardy or with a deeper root system I guess would the corys still be able to root around or would it eventually get to be too planted?

I'm thinking about the grass outside in the yard type of thing. Would a cory be ok living in my yard if we were just looking at the grass/soil.substrate setup?

 

[SoapDoctor]

Oh and I'm not expecting out of control growth. I was just thinking long term minimalist maintenance. I'd rather not have to weed areas that I don't want stuff growing.

 

[mesto]

Well, I'm still learning myself, just got cories 6 weeks ago or so. They are still growing so about 1.5 inches. So I still don't know their true destructive power, lol. But yes they do uproot some plants and work your substrate over, my sand looks a little ripply all over now. They expose stuff in my sand so that with rosette plants and DHG sometimes I have to re-bury some roots to help the plants out. On the flip side, I think they help to work the mulm into the sand layer which the root feeding plants will appreciate. And they keep the bottom cleaner because instead of stuff sitting there or drifting against plants it's worked into the substrate or kicked up for the filters to catch.

Cool that you want to do CO2, all stuff should grow much faster and probably better with that. But I also think if you don't want to prune back or "weed" plants in your tank, CO2 will not really help with that goal...Anyway I see planted tank keeping as almost like bonsai keeping or something. Part of the fun is maintaining etc. And if you elect not to for awhile, it will get overgrown and need weeding eventually, especially if you are doing things right and keeping the plants happy. JMO

 

[TL1000RSquid]

I tried doing DHG and baby tears in a tank with cories, failed miserably got tired of replanting them daily.

 

[tanker]

I tried doing DHG and baby tears in a tank with cories, failed miserably got tired of replanting them daily.

IMO---Carpet plants and Corys do not mix. Unless you carpet first (about a year) then add corys.

 

[BruinsBro1997]

Cories and carpets...it never really worked for me. My dwarf sag grew like a weed, yes, and it covered the front of the tank almost completely, but in the end the cories won. They managed to uproot the plants and simply work around them and move them to their needs. I got tired of the way it looked messy and irregular, so I just threw it all in my garbage tank where I keep all my spare clippings in case I want to replant them someday.