Eleocharis acicularis is a small grass-like plant with filamentous leave. It creates a fine dense carpet at favourable growth condition.
E. acicularis is quite sturdy and hardy with a wide temperature tolerance. Thus, it is suitable as pond plant, too, because it usually survives the wintertime. The plant prefers a fine-grained and nutrient rich substrate and the growth benefits greatly from CO
2 enrichment. There are more than 100 species of
Eleocharis sp.. They are found all over the world and many of them are very hard to distinguish from each other. Unfortunately, only a few species are suitable for aquarium purposes.
E. acicularis is very suitable as foreground plant because the water form rarely exceeds 15 cm. It spreads by means of runners but the horizontal growth is nevertheless quite slow. Therefore, we recommend dividing the pot into 10-12 or even smaller plants before planting them spaced 2 to 5 cm apart. In any case, the E. acicularis looks best when planted in-groups. In small aquaria, the plant looks great when planted in-groups into a carpet of for example Glossostigma elatinoides. The plant requires much less attention than the fast-growing foreground plants, which requires repeated trimming of the runners with long internodes.
A relatively new employment of E. acicularis is using it as an anchor for Riccia fluitans when the latter is grown submerged after the Armano-style. To begin with, the buoyant Riccia carpet is kept from floating to the surface by sprinkling with pebbles. Thereafter individual filaments of E. acicularis are planted in between the Riccia-carpet and E. acicularis will then keep Riccia in position.
