Dwarf Baby Tears on Lava Rock

Dwarf Baby Tears on Lava Rock is Hemianthus callitrichoides 'Cuba' already grown in and rooted onto a small piece of porous lava rock, which solves the single most annoying thing about the hobby's finest carpet plant: planting it. No tweezers, no splitting a pot into fifty two-leaf plugs, no watching half of them float away. You set the rock down where you want it and you have an established patch of the tightest, brightest carpet in freshwater. See the rest of our live freshwater plants for the rest of the scape.

Care Guide

• Place it, do not plant it. Set the rock on the substrate or nestle it into the hardscape. The roots are already through the lava rock, so it will not float or come apart. You can bury the base of the rock in substrate if you want the carpet to look flush with the floor.
• High light is still required. Growing on a rock does not change what the plant wants. Under weak light this stays alive but stops spreading and loses its tight habit. Put it in the brightest open part of the tank.
• CO2 is strongly recommended. If you want it to grow off the rock and onto the substrate it needs carbon. Seachem Flourish Excel can hold it as a standalone accent piece; pressurized CO2 is what turns it into a spreading carpet.
• Fertilizer: because the roots are in rock rather than soil, water column dosing does the feeding here. Seachem Flourish on a regular schedule matters more for a mounted plant than a potted one.
• Water: 68 to 78°F, pH 6.0 to 7.5. It prefers the cooler half of the tropical range.
• Trim it. The carpet grows in layers and the shaded lower ones die back if it gets too thick. Mow it with scissors every few weeks and siphon out the clippings, which will otherwise replant themselves all over the tank.

Specifications

Placement and Companions

Where it goes: foreground, in open light. Use one rock as a single green accent between stones, or buy several and place them in a loose cluster so they grow together into a continuous carpet.

The mounted format is the easy way in. Our potted Dwarf Baby Tears is the same plant and the cheaper way to cover a large area, but it means splitting a pot into dozens of tiny plugs and planting each one. Start with a rock if you have never carpeted before.

Same idea, other plants: we mount Anubias on Lava Rock and Java Fern on Lava Rock too, and both are far more forgiving of low light if this one sounds like more work than you want.

Fish and invertebrates: safe with community fish and shrimp, and much harder for diggers to uproot than a planted carpet, since it is anchored to a rock. Shrimp graze the surface without damaging it.

Recommended Supplies

• Seachem Flourish Excel: liquid carbon, the minimum if you are not injecting CO2.
• Seachem Flourish: water column fertilizer, the main feed for a rock-mounted plant.
• Dwarf Baby Tears - Potted: the same plant in bulk, for covering a whole foreground.
• Monte Carlo: the forgiving carpet alternative if your tank is not high light.
• CaribSea Eco-Complete: a planted substrate for the runners to spread into.

FAQ

What exactly am I getting?
One piece of lava rock roughly one to three inches across, with Dwarf Baby Tears already grown in and rooted onto it. Rock shape and coverage vary, since they are grown rather than manufactured.

Will it spread off the rock?
Under high light and CO2, yes. Runners creep onto the surrounding substrate and it becomes a normal carpet with the rock buried underneath. Without CO2 it generally stays put on the rock as an accent.

Is this easier than planting the potted version?
Much easier to start, identical to keep. You skip the tedious planting stage entirely, but the plant still wants high light and CO2 once it is in your tank.

Can I glue it to hardscape?
Yes. Cyanoacrylate gel bonds lava rock to stone or wood, so you can lift the patch off the substrate and put it on a ledge. Use gel rather than liquid so it does not wick into the plant.