New Planted tank

[neon1423]

Hey all, so I've spent a lot of birthday money and some personal money in greatly upgrading a 20 gallon tank into a planted tank. I've bought flourite black sand as well as a finnex ray2 ds light. Everything is scheduled to arrive by thursday so I still have a few days to do more research.

My plan is to make a carpet of dwarf hair grass, with a 'tower' of driftwood with christmas moss, java fern and anubius nana growing on it. I also have some funky plant I don't know the name of, but its a nice deep purple when there's high enough iron levels (which I have flourish iron suppliments for).

I do have a few questions. First, whats the easiest way to get the dwarf hair grass to grow? I have some in another tank which I've had for a while and it barely seems to grow. Should I add some root tabs to the substraite? I've read places about 'dry planting' can anyone give me an idea as to what that is and if it works? Should I plant what hairgrass I have in one large patch or break it up and plant small bunches all over?

Also, once I have the carpet grown, will the tank have any need for bottom feeders. Currently the tank which I'll be redoing, has a stripped raphael catfish, and 4 cory catfish. Should I leave them in, or will they damage the carpet, or worse die?

Any other advice would be appreciated.

[exv152]

DHG is an easy plant to grow. With some decent light and a general all purpose fertilizer like seachem flourish, it will grow faster. With higher light, CO2 and a daily fert regimen it will grow much faster. Root tabs are not necessary, just adding liquid or dry ferts to the water column should be good enough. You can do a dry start with DHG, all you need to do is setup the tank with substrate, fill it with water so the substrate is moist but not soaking, and plant the DHG into that, then cover the top of the tank with saran wrap, see link. Then spray water a couple of times a week, and ventilate the top to allow fresh air in. I've done the dry start with other plants with good results.  http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/showthread.php?t=101107. I would break up the pot and plant the individual planlets with tweezers. That way you get a more even growth. Once the plant grows in you can flood the tank, and once it's cycled, and the plant is established, you can add cories.

[Pyrrolin]

I got some dwarf hair grass a while ago for a tank and the container it came in was about 1.5 inches in diameter.  I used maybe 20 percent of it to plant the 20 long.  I separated each individual piece of grass and planted them one by one with long tweezers about an inch apart.  I was running dual t5ho and co2 and it expanded very fast.

I had also planted glossostigma in that tank at the same time and the DHG took over.

I found with the 20 long with deep substrate the DHG grew higher than I liked so be prepared to trim it.  A good idea would be a smaller diameter hose and draining water slowly for a WC while using the outflow to vacuum the trimmed bits.

Two carpeting plants at once doesn't work very well from my experience just for info.