PiperJason wrote:
Hey all, I've been lurking around here a few days and now I have a
question about the plants in my tank. For starters all I have is a 2.5
gal tank with one betta in it lit by a 20watt halogen desk lamp. I have
water sprites and some other kind of floating plant covering a good
part of the tank surface. Those are growing like there is no tomorrow.
My problems are below the surface.

First I bought some java moss thinking it would carpet the bottom of my
tank in no time. Well it just doesn't seem to grow much at all, and is
surely isn't really grabbing onto the gravel much at all. Secondly, my
java ferns don't seem to be growing much themselves, but throwing
plantlets off like crazy. I put a peice of drift wood in the tank for
the ferns to latch onto, but they dont seem to grab ahold. My betta
keeps rubbing on the wood tearing its fins so I think I'm going to take
the wood out. As such, I was wondering how well the fern will grow on
the substrated. I've read enough to know to not bury the rhizome, and
it seems that few of the larger sections of ferns have enough density
to sink and stand on their own with just a little help. Thus, is it
possible to grow the java fern this way, lightly on the gravel bottom.
The gravel is rather small in diameter, and natural rock, not painted
fancy stuff, it looks like its a lot of quartz also.

To top off my frustration, I have algae on all sides of the tank. I
only feed the fish a bit in the morning and at night, and he eats all I
give him in under a minute... Any advice is greatly apprechiated.


I've had great success with Java moss. Just put a couple of pebbles in
it to make it stay on the gravel. To attach to driftwood you can use
pebbles to hold it down and/or hook it over spiky parts of the wood.

Java moss is low-light but it does require SOME light, say a watt per
gallon fluorescent or lower light plus indirect sunlight. The water
sprite is probably shading the moss too much. Placing the tank where
daylight can get in through the side may help.

Sorry I know little about Java fern but perhaps more light/ less shading
will help it too.
Steve