Lush Green Carpet

[LaurelJ]

I was looking at some planted aquariums and saw a lot of gorgeous, thick green vegetation covering the bottoms of even the smallest tanks. I love planted tanks, and have a bag of Eco Complete at the bottom of a 10 gal (which I know would cause problems for caudates) with a few amphibious plants; I was hoping that a thick ground cover would eliminate or at least lessen the chances of a newt swallowing the substrate. My main issue is that most of the ground cover I liked was tropical. Any ideas on what I could put down there?

My second thought was to ditch the substrate and create a moss carpet that could be easily lifted out for cleaning. I have no idea how that could be accomplished without ridiculous amounts of java swirling around in my tank…you folk are the experts, can you give me any ideas?

 

[lims]

Quite often plants which the shop sells as tropical, will actually survive at lower temps but won't thrive nessesarily. Check on planted tank forum (link somewhere in this section) for axact temps plants can live at (Even then, I've kept some of them colder than they say)...

Experimentation.....

 

[stevethegator34]

this site may be useful. contains detailed information on how to create a moss "wall", but could surely be applied to create a moss floor as well

http://www.aquamoss.net/How to create a moss wall/How to create a moss wall.htm

 

[Yahilles]

"Green carpets" in planted tanks are often made by using those plants:
Glossostigma elatinoides, Echinodorus tenellus, Hemianthus callitrichoides, Saggitaria subulata. All of them needs rather strong lightning.
Moss: I put the Java, Christmas, Taiwan etc. moss on rock and cover it with eee... web/net and in some pass of time it overgrows it, making the rock a green ball or something. I don't clean it, if water is clean, it don't need so. Small refuses are cleaned by water snails, like trumpet or pond snails.

So sorry for my bad english (

 

[LaurelJ]

Anyone think riccia would work instead of moss for that carpet? By the way, thanks for the link, Steve. I think that was exactly what I was thinking of. Now I just have to figure out how that would work without newts getting stuck underneath or caught on the edges.

 

[Yahilles]

I use Riccia on stones, and i saw 1-2 aquariums with entire carpet made by it.

 

[Abrahm]

Anyone think riccia would work instead of moss for that carpet? By the way, thanks for the link, Steve. I think that was exactly what I was thinking of. Now I just have to figure out how that would work without newts getting stuck underneath or caught on the edges.

Riccia requires very strong lighting and usually CO2 injection to reach the lush green carpet stage. It is also a tropical plant so the likelihood of it doing well in a newt tank is pretty low.

I think I would stick with java moss for a newt enclosure if you wanted to make a carpet.