Has anyone grown bloodvomit and eriocaulons in sand?

[snowballs99]

I been wanting to swap some aquasoil tanks to pure sand for simplicity. (They are extremely easy to clean and maintain).

But I haven't ever been able to grow the soft water root heavy species in sand.

Has anyone had any luck with those 2 plants?

I have

Eriocaulon saluwasi
Eriocaulon ratnigiri
Eriocaulon forgot name
Blood vomit

As the 4 plants I wanna keep going.

Im using HCL + tap water to remove my 2dkh to near 0. I also have some larger osmocote clone balls I can roll their roots in for ammonia if that helps.

Didn't seem to help too much tho.

 

[BenB]

I know @Burr740 has grown them in black diamond blasting sand. So they will at least grow in an insert substrate. Now, will they grow in such a small grain size, I don't know that one.

Disclaimer: I know he's grown the Erios, because he sells them online. I'm fuzzy on the BV, but I'm pretty sure he has.

 

[TRyan]

I grow eriocaulon Vietnam in BDBS , course grit. It grows quite well for me. Not sure if that's the one you can't remember the name of.

 

[snowballs99]

I grow eriocaulon Vietnam in BDBS, course grit. It grows quite well for me. Not sure if that's the one you can't remember the name of.

I think Vietnam is one of the easier ones.

Bloodvomit and ratnigiri will just curl up and die over a month if there's something they don't like.

 

[TRyan]

Yes, Vietnam is definitely an easy one. I have no experience with the difficult ones.

 

[bradquade]

I've grown a variety of Eriocaulon species in black diamond blasting sand. As mentioned by others, Vietnam is very easy to grow in sand and will grow in nearly any water conditions. Eriocaulon lineare is equally easy to grow, but it doesn't seem like its readily available anymore. I've also grown a few varieties of the spiky green Eriocaulons (like pictured below) in black diamond blasting sand with Dallas, TX tap water (~4 dKH if I remember correctly) and no substrate fertilization. This includes cinereum, amami oshima, polaris, and ratnagiricum (the last 3 were grown from seeds so I'm not sure if they're legit types). You can see a few Eriocaulon variants in the full tank shot below. I tried growing BV and Eriocaulon quinquangulare in these tanks with blasting sand and had much worse luck. They grew, but weren't as consistent and melted often. After switching to aquasoil and decreasing KH with HCl I had no issue growing BV and quins, but I'm not sure if that's from the lower KH or aquasoil. I would guess its the lower KH that helped because quins and BV grew very well in 2 year old aquasoil and that shouldn't have any substrate nutrition.

 

[snowballs99]

I've grown a variety of Eriocaulon species in black diamond blasting sand. As mentioned by others, Vietnam is very easy to grow in sand and will grow in nearly any water conditions. Eriocaulon lineare is equally easy to grow, but it doesn't seem like its readily available anymore. I've also grown a few varieties of the spiky green Eriocaulons (like pictured below) in black diamond blasting sand with Dallas, TX tap water (~4 dKH if I remember correctly) and no substrate fertilization. This includes cinereum, amami oshima, polaris, and ratnagiricum (the last 3 were grown from seeds so I'm not sure if they're legit types). You can see a few Eriocaulon variants in the full tank shot below. I tried growing BV and Eriocaulon quinquangulare in these tanks with blasting sand and had much worse luck. They grew, but weren't as consistent and melted often. After switching to aquasoil and decreasing KH with HCl I had no issue growing BV and quins, but I'm not sure if that's from the lower KH or aquasoil. I would guess its the lower KH that helped because quins and BV grew very well in 2 year old aquasoil and that shouldn't have any substrate nutrition.

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Thanks, I was going to test it myself but I'm on my last 4-5 erio ratnigiris after having 20-30 and not focusing on them.

How much light are you giving them? I find that they did very well with super high intense lighting, used to grow them like crazy before but that was a few years back.

 

[bradquade]

This was back in the day when I was using a 4 bulb T5HO setup right on top of a 75 gallon tank. That's pretty decent lighting, but not super intense. I also tend to let my tanks overgrow and I remember the spiky erios on the left growing even when partially shaded by the stems in the back.