Anyone have a Riccia carpet?

[Chrona]

I was thinking about growing out a riccia lawn using hairgrass as the scaffold, but I read that the lower riccia dies out and the whole assembly grows upwards. Does anyone have a riccia carpet? How tall do they grow? This is for a 10g tank, so it can't be too high.

[Incredulous_Ed]

most of the riccia I've seen grows pretty low. I don't think it will grow too high for a 10g. Using my incredible memory recall skills, I remember reading in a book that is only gets to 0.6 inches tall.

[Chrona]

Well, what do you have it on top of? I've been reading about how Riccia doesn't stick to anything, as it's normally free floating, so you need to put in on top of an existing hairgrass or java moss lawn or it'll seperate at some point.

[Incredulous_Ed]

Riccia is free floating. You have to attach it to something with a fishing line or a nylon net or something that doesn't disinegrate. To attach it to hairgrass just bend som of the blades over the riccia and wrap them with a fishing line or hair net or something.

[Chrona]

I read that with fishnets, the Riccia eventually pops free because the lower layer dies from lack of light. So I was gonna use hairgrass, since it's a living, growing scaffolding, but I was just wondering how high the whole assembly grows. I figured dwarf hairgrass grows to like 3 inches or so? That's borderline ok for a 10g tank, but if the riccia adds like another 1-2 inches on top of that....lol

[Incredulous_Ed]

4 inches max? maybe a little less.