One aquatic plant that’ll do well in your aquarium is guppy grass; also known as the najas grass. Guppy grass can grow and thrive in your aquarium while serving some beneficial purposes.
While the benefits may seem enticing, growing and maintaining guppy grass takes more than just submerging it in your tank. Before searching for a guppy grass for sale, there are a few things you should know and consider before buying and growing it in your tank.
Read through the articles and learn what they are.
Let’s get right into it.
What Guppy Grass Needs To Grow
When growing plants, you have to consider the soil, light, and several other factors. Let’s take a close look at all the necessary things to consider before getting one for your fish tank
- Light requirement
As earlier stated, guppy grass needs light to grow in your tank. You need to expose the grass to either low or medium light. Exposure to high light can damage the plant and leave the branches with a reddish tint.
Moreover, each exposure duration should be about 8 to 12 hours of light to thrive well. Then, you should watch out for color changes in your plant and reduce the light if you notice any tint because you could risk burning the plant.
- pH levels
Your tank’s pH level also affects najas’ grass growth. Extremely low or high pH levels can stunt or kill the grass.
It’s advisable to keep the pH level between 6 and 8 to allow the guppy grass to thrive in water. Therefore, regularly check whether you need to increase or decrease your tank’s water pH before submerging the plant in the tank.
- Temperature
Generally, guppy grass can withstand different ranges of temperature. This is a huge advantage, especially if you want to grow another background plant in your tank because it can withstand the plant’s temperature requirements.
However, note that guppy grass will mostly thrive in temperature conditions between 50°F and 80°F.
- Tank size
When checking for guppy grass for sale, you need to consider your tank size. While they can thrive in nano-sized tanks, they can grow quite a lot and spread their branches.
In addition, guppy grasses tend to grow very fast; therefore, your tank size should be about at least 10 gallons. At this size, the tank should be enough to house the plant at the initial stage while it grows.
- Water type
One of the significant benefits of guppy grass is its ability to grow in either soft or hard water. This aquatic plant can tolerate water hardness between 2 to 20 GH (general hardness).
This means that you can grow your guppy grass alongside other plants, and they’ll survive. However, you should also bear in mind their pH tolerance.
- Fertilization and CO2
Your guppy grass can grow well without the help of fertilizers or CO2. However, if you notice that it isn’t growing as it should, you can enhance the growth using liquid fertilizer from time to time.
This will help replenish the lost nutrients in your tank. If you have shrimps in your tank, you should be careful because a high-level of CO2 or copper in fertilizers can harm them.
- Water flow
You need to grow your fish in low water flow. It will not only help the plant to grow well, but it will prevent your tank’s filter or messing the aquarium up.
- Growing option
Growing guppy grass in your task is somewhat easy, and you can either plant it in a substrate in your tank or leave it floating. You could also combine both in the tank.
For planting: If you choose to plant guppy grass on a substrate, you need to divide the stem into pieces and insert the roots in for about 2 inches or 5cm.
For floating: To float guppy grass, divide the grass stems and place them at different locations in your tank.
Note:
Guppy grass can grow pretty fast. With all things put in place and considering important factors, it can grow so fast and overrun your tank. Guppy grass can grow up to 3 feet and the leaves can go about 3 centimeters long when fully matured.
When it overruns your tank, you can manage it by trimming or getting your fish to feed on it as food.
Benefits of A Fully Grown Guppy Grass
Should you allow your guppy grass overgrow or not? Let’s see some benefits of a fully grown guppy grass:
- Reduces algae growth
The presence of algae in your aquarium can plague your fish tank and sap available nutrients. But thankfully, guppy grass will help preserve or make better use of the nutrients in your fish tank. By doing this, it helps to reduce algae growth in your tank.
- Can serve as food
Some types of fish love guppy grass and will eat it as food. If you have fishes like goldfish, cichlids, and silver dollars, you should consider growing guppy grass in your aquarium.
While they eat the plant, they also help you maintain it, so you won’t need to trim or do anything extra to prevent it from messing up your aquarium.
- Balances nutrient
Guppy grass adds to the water quality of your aquarium. It removes toxins, nitrite, ammonia, and metal from your tank. Moreover, it also produces oxygen in your tank, which is beneficial to your fish.
- Beautify tanks
In aquascaping, plants add beauty to your fish tank. If you need an aquatic plant to beautify your fish tank, you should get some guppy grass.
- Improves breeding
Guppy grass in your tank will serve as a breeding ground for some of your fish like shrimps, egg scatterers, and live-bearers. There, they can lay and nurture their eggs.
- Serves as a foraging area
Further, guppy grass is a good place for growing biofilms, serving as the first feed for newly hatched shrimplets or fry.
Guppy grass options to pick from for your aquarium:
Final thoughts
Finding guppy grass for sale isn’t a huge problem when you have everything you need in place. Simply confirm the water pH, hardness, temperature, lighting, and other important factors. Then, ensure you clean and quarantine your guppy grass before placing them in your aquarium.
