Dry start of a planted tank Sword and Red plant ideas

[Dave G]

I am new and have fallen into the deep end :).  I am just about to proceed with a dry start on my 75 gallon tank eventually using CO2.  I am starting with Dwarf Grass as a carpet and Monte Carlo on the bonsai trees.  Now that i know its going to be 4-7 weeks of time before water/fish i was wondering what other plants I could plant to get them established.  The kids choose Angel Fish as the showcase and community fish for the others.  I was wondering if Amazon Swords can be dry started?  The other area are the red plants i was looking at Rotala Vietnam, Ludwidia Palustris Super Red and Alternanthera Reinecki but would love some ideas.  thanks and look forward to the discussion.

Dave

Edited May 24, 2022 by Dave Gillette

[Odd Duck]

If you dry start with all of your other plants, they will have to convert to submerse from their emerse forms all at once.  This puts a LOT of degrading plant material into your water column and would necessitate even more water changes than otherwise.  I would recommend you get plants now if you have a tank or tote you can use as a grow out.  Get them started on their conversion to submerse forms, then you’ll have better plant material to work with that doesn’t have to convert from emerse to submerse.  Not everything you get will be in emerse form (most of your stems should already be submerse), but most swords will be in their emerse form.  Depending on how many you plan to add, it could make a difference at flooding on how much algae you fight.  I had a bunch of swords already growing submerse, but looking back, I wish I had gotten the rest of them earlier to convert them before they went into my display.

I relatively recently finished a dry start for Fissidens moss on wood, then planted and flooded, and I’ve got pea soup going on in my 100 G angelfish tank.  I haven’t linked all my recent pics yet (they aren’t terribly interesting because, well, pea soup), but I just added some grassy looking Sag to the tank.  Here’s that story in the first link.  The main story about my dry start is in the link in my sig or the second link below.

 

 

[Dave G]

Thank you very much for the repsonse,  this really helped me.  I will look at your posts on the topic.  I am planting tomorrow night so i am in the hurry up and wait phase.

[Bjorn]

I'm 9 days into a dry start so I can't speak from experience yet. But in my research someone suggested to inject very high amounts of co2 after flooding then tapper off to slowly acclimate the plants to levels that are safe for fish. The idea is it'll reduce the amount of melting you get or at least spread out the melting period so it's not all at once. That of course means you have to wait longer to add live stock but it's something to consider since you mentioned you're already interested in adding co2.

Edited May 25, 2022 by Bjorn

[Dave G]

The store i am working with strongly recommended the very high level of co2 process as well for the same reasons, thanks for adding the comment.   He also recommeded to  slowly introduce fish to make sure it is fish ready after things settle down.