I'm a little afraid of change but...

Karackle

So I've been thinking about trying a carpet plant in my 20g aquarium. It's a 20g High with only 15 watts of T8 (or T5?....i'll double check when i get home) fluorescent lighting over it. It's ~16" high, so I imagine not a TON of that light hits the bottom. HOWEVER i do have excellent growth of Wisteria, purple cabomba, anubias, crypt wendtii red (small), crypt (spiralis?) and what i've been calling wendtii green but am now thinking is another anubias. my small red cryot wendtii is shooting out new leaves like crazy, but it's very low to the ground and somewhat in the shade of my driftwood (it was ~3-4 leaves about a month ago now it is ~10+), and the 2 small pieces of wisteria were only single leaves that got broken off during a water change about 2 weeks ago. Here's a picture to show which i'm talking about:

circled in red is the small red crypt, in yellow are the small pieces of wisteria:
This image has been resized. Click this bar to view the full image. The original image is sized 791x594.

I think my tank gets either some direct or ambient sunlight during the day, it's the only reason i can think that the plants do so well despite a mere .75wpg. So my questions and concerns:

1) Is there any carpet plant/moss that would grow in such low light?

2) I could upgrade my lighting to
a) a second strip light
b) a coralife dual bulb fixture Coralife F/W T-5 Aqualight Double Strip Light-30
BUT i'm worried about throwing the whole tank off balance (which worries me a little with adding the carpet anyway)

How does one gravel vac with a carpet?

would a carpet grow in just an aquarium gravel substrate?

Sorry for the lengthy, possibly nonsensical and very train of thought post.

And as always, thanks in advance!!!

Tank Journal and Parameters:
http://www.fishtankforums.com/4-fres...d-journal.html (20 Gallon Planted Journal (! 56k))
20g High, low tech tank
regular aquarium gravel, 78 degrees, Penguin Biowheel 100 filter
Flora:
Purple Cabomba, Wisteria, Cryptocoryne wendtii red (small), Crypt wendtii green (large), Crypt spiralis, Anubias (nana i think)
Fauna:
3 female Bettas, 3 mollies, 3 neon tetras, 3 glolight tetras, 3 zebra danios, 1 female guppy, 1 clown pleco

mralgae

I think the first thing you need to look at is the over all lay out of the tank its self, in particularly the plants. only you can decide if you want to increase the lighting, which obviously is going to help, but by increasing the lighting then comes c02 ferts and doing away with the air curtain at the back of the tank.
When I say about the plants I mean this.
If you look at the wisteria & cabomba they are both leaning and stretching inwards towards the light, this means that they are not getting enough light to fully benefit from. Personally if you keep every thing as it is and re arrange the tank to best suit the plants you have you can still keep what you have and still add a carpet of hairgrass which may grow well in the centre of the tank but would probably struggle to wards the outsides of the tank.
Also the like of the low light plants you have, Anubias etc. could be placed under the wood and at the outer edges.

Karackle

Thanks for the input! Yes, they do grow towards the light, the cabomba also gets pushed by the outflow of my filter, it's a HOB that's hung on the side :-P I think I might add a second strip light so the tank is more evenly lit. I do dose with Flourish excel and Comprehensive every 1-2 weeks, and could easily make that more frequent, i'd just add it to my 5g fert schedule, that tank is just under 2.5wpg, no CO2, definitely low light/low tech, so if i added another 15w strip, i'd be well under 2wpg.

Also...would I need to switch out the substrate in the carpeting area? If so with what and how would i do this? just swap old for new?

as always, thanks in advance, and thanks for the input!

mralgae

Karackle

Thanks for the input once again, I think i'll hold off on any substrate changing until I'm ready to re-do the whole scape...as it is I'm finally getting it to look the way i wanted when I first envisioned it, so i'll wait until it fills in some more and I get bored with the way it looks, then when it's time to pull out the plants anyway and start over, i'll change the substrate. :-P For now....i'll see what, if anything, i can get to spread over and cover some of my brightly colored gravel...