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hi, i finally got my order of marimo balls, hairgrass, glossostigma, and corkscrew and have a few questions for you guys...

the dwarf hairgrass are way taller than i expected, they grow up to 4 inches right? do you guys trim them??

marimo balls, how do you guys "plant" them? just drop them in? how do they reproduce?

glossostigma... they look like salad... ]

now my tank is getting more plants, it start to get hard to plant things behind rocks, wood, or close to other plants, any tips??

and with eco-complete, the sand kinda doesnt hold the roots down as good as regular gravel tips on this?

My hairgrass has never made it to 4", so I never trimmed it. Maybe someone who has trimmed it will come along and tell how it works, but I would try to trim a bit first to see if the leaves don't die off when trimmed. The size also depends which Eleocharis specie you got -- accicularis, parvula or something else. Parvula, as far as I know, is the one the is the shortest.

Never had marimo balls, but from what I've read about them here and there you just drop them into the water and you have to turn them around occasionally so they keep their shape. If you want to reproduce them just divide them into several pieces and turn those pieces and they will grow. Have also seen pictures where they were flattened and attached to wood, like java moss.

As for the glosso salad, try to sort it out so you have individual plants. I usually take a clump, straighten the roots and plant it so half of it is buried under the substrate so it keeps it down. The bits buried in the substrate will send shoots up.

As for planting, I sometimes use tweezers, depends what plant I'm planting and where. A long pair (like medical tweezers) will be more useful in places hard to reach. This is a nice fancy kit I hope to own one of these days.

And I don't know about eco complete. Never used it.

Hope this helped.

yeah its good info, i'll try to get myself some tweezers now

I have only seen dwarf hairgrass grow above 4" and that is when grown emersed. submerged i have never seen it get over 2-3" tall. in fact in my 20G my dwarf hairgrass is around 1-2" tall.
as for glosso,planting it can be quite tedious, but it can look gorgeous when done properly, it should be noted that glosso is highly dependent on light in order to remain as a forgeground plant, in lower light it begins to grow vertically instead of laterally. tweezers are indeed handy, i just got a set of 11" medical tools similar to the one linked above, and i must say it makes thing MUCH easier for planting small rooted plants(glosso and dwarf hairgrass)

i have unfortunetly never cared for a marimo ball, but from what i have read the pretty much just float around.

for tweezers, http://www.azgardens.com has several good aquascaping kits. they are rather expensive, but since they are medical tools its sort of self explanatory.

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Last edited by Megil Tel'Zeke at 28-May-2005 12:20

Last edited by bensaf at 30-May-2005 01:32

Yea, hairgrass never made it past 3" for me, although I do occasionally trim it, in which case I merely trim it as one would hedges: by taking off a bit from the top.

i just bought a pair of tweezers, and didnt use it i took out the clump, and looked at it, and hit myself in the head. it looks SO messy, but i managed to seperate them into individual stems, but i grouped them about 4 stems per group and re-planted them, looks better now, i hope they will spread out soon.

my tank is a little high up, even with a chair its tiring to be up there thats why i didnt want to spent 45 minutes up there planting each little glosso.

as for hairgrass, they are 4 inches!!! but they were potted, so removing the wool wasnt too much fun, i only managed to remove 1/2 of the wool, and left the rest there because of the tiny roots are getting damaged. i still broke them up into several small chunks, and look nice also.

thanks guys

All you have to do is drop the Marimo Balls in your tank & they will "drown" within a few hours. Just leave them in your tank & turn them from time to time. They will feed on all nasties in water & they'll grow. To divide them, just cut them in half with your finger tips, so you can keep them round & then you have 2 & so on.


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now the marimo balls have kinda settled in a little, but they "move" a little when my hands create a little current nearby, do you guys just push it a tiny bit into the gravel to keep it stay the same spot?

also since they are kinda furry, how do you guys keep the "fur" clean? its attracted a lot of debris now... such headache:%)

if you really want glosso this site might help

<<posts 603

Last edited by dude_dude at 30-May-2005 03:52

Them glosso look nice...but they look like they'd be a pain in the rear to plant

I need to get me some moss balls...but they're too expensive ($7 each here )...

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really? i went to my fish shop, and saw theirs are kinda old and dying because of lighting. so i told the guy that i want some new ones, and he ordered them for me at 5 dollars a piece, golfball size.

some other shops i have seen them for 12+ dollars, these things are kinda crazy, my girlfriend is not a fish person, but shes very interested in the marimo moss balls. the only thing annoys me is that their "fur" is kinda fine, so collects a lot of debris, and hard to find a spot to make them stay and not rolling around.