How can I grow a carpet of either Glossostigma, or Baby Tears?

I bought 3 pots of Glossostigma, and 2 pots of Baby Tears a few weeks ago. I took them out of the pot, removed most of the wool, separated each pot into 4 bunches, and planted them in my gravel. the Baby Tears fell apart almost instantly, and the Glossostigma only took a few more days before disappearing. is there a certain way to grow these plants? I saw a few videos on youtube where people just planted their Baby Tears, pot and wool included, directly into their substrate...

 

With a great degree of difficulty lol. I've tried to grow both but could never keep it rooted. I'd spend hours planting little individual stems only to have 90% floating the next day. What is your lighting like? Both will need more light than a standard comes-with-the-tank type light fixture can provide.

 

I've seen people using tweezers to stick the individual glossostigma stems deep into the substrate. It needs high light, CO2 and ferts.

Which kind of baby tears: dwarf, regular or giant?

-Lisa

 

By Baby Tears I'm assuming you mean Hemianthus Callitrichodides? High light (3wpg+), co2, fertilizers & a fine substrate are the way to go. Neither plant will do well in gravel & they will be outright immpossible in gravel with more than 0.300" diameter. Fine substrates like sand or Eco-Complete really are essential for these plants so that you don't have the uprooting problems. Even with fine substrates you will still have a hard time keeping it in place until it has good roots if there are fish already in the tank or even too much current.

 

You will need a deep substrate at least 2 inches of fine substrate suggested by Nutter. You need some sort of tweezers to plan them as well. A LFS has a few show tanks with glosso's in them and he's got 5 wpg in each tank to keep the glosso carpet low. He also adds fertz and has a co2 system.

 

dwarf baby tears

I have a really nice lighting fixture
I just had a problem removing the plants from the pot
I left a good bit of wool on the roots

 

You may trim some parts of the roots to get the wool out. I did with mine and the roots grew back longer.

 

dwarf baby tears

I have a really nice lighting fixture
I just had a problem removing the plants from the pot
I left a good bit of wool on the roots

Light, light, light! It is not whether you use tweezer or hand to plant them that matters.
What is your WATTAGE/GALLON? It needs to be at least 2-3 watts/gallon. Otherwise it will grow upward, not crawling.
CO2 is very important in their propogation. I inject CO2 like 3 bubbles / second. And I have very good results with them. They grow like half an inch per day. Good luck!