What Carpet Plants grow in Pea Gravel?

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angelcraze

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Mar 21, 2020
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I won't be siphoning the stuff building up at the bottom, I want to deal with it in a way that it cycles back into the system. I don't have a filter at all, and I meant amazon sword grass. I'm also trying to find a plant with minimum trimming, but I'll look into stargrass
Also just to say, it can be difficult to locate stargrass since it doesn't ship well. I got my stargrass from a friend, and my LFS buys it off local aquarists. The scientific name is Heteranthera zosterifolia. Not sure why it ships so badly, I read it is delicate, but I find it holds up well to 7 BN plecos blasting though it for food. Also I don't spend much time trimming, in my 5 foot tank, i'll spend maybe 5 mins trimming and replanting a week if that.

It's the only plant I've been able to grow in pea gravel except for Hemianthus micranthemoides (baby tears), but it requires more trimming and if you don't stay on it, it will grow so thick and smother itself out, causing the lower leaves to melt and the whole carpet starts to rise and detach.

I can't help you with the incorporating the mulm back into the system because I believe in siphoning the substrate (at least a skim siphon). But stargrass would hide it lol!
 

the loach

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Aug 6, 2018
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I won't be siphoning the stuff building up at the bottom, I want to deal with it in a way that it cycles back into the system. I don't have a filter at all, and I meant amazon sword grass. I'm also trying to find a plant with minimum trimming, but I'll look into stargrass
I don't know where you got the idea this was all possible? There is no such thing as a 'self sustaining' aquarium. And then the plants need to have 'minimum trimming' as well... while the guppies keep multiplying?

I only have lighting and heat going into the aquarium. I set up the ecosystem so I have natural filter, decomposes, and consumers. The gravel is the size of peas, and yes, roughly 5" of substrate.
Pea gravel is much too coarse for aquarium plants. And 5" thick is way too much. For a low maintenance aquarium (which I think you want) you need coarse sand or fine gravel ±3mm in diameter and then a layer between 1" to 2" max.
You can have a filterless tank no problem when it is well planted and lightly stocked. But you still have to vacuum the substrate, do water changes and trim plants. If you live in a warm enough climate, or the room is always heated at 70, you can go without a heater as well.
But you need to vacuum and do water changes still, there is no such thing as an aquarium that keeps itself clean or a particular fish or shrimp that will do it for you, that was made up by sales people.
 

angelcraze

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Mar 21, 2020
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So you mean you weren't going to swap out water at all? I thought you meant you just weren't going to siphon (which still isn't ideal). But there are many reasons to change water including those we don't even test for, so it's impossible to say you don't have to change water in said tank.

But, if you don't want to be trimming, you could stick to rhizomes plants like anubias, java fern varieties, bolbitis or buce. Also heavy rooters like sword (melon types because amazon sword can get very large), crypt, smaller aponogetons.
 
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