This is what I call a healthy plant and there is a lot of it and because of that it could be quite expensive to buy. But don’t worry because today I will show you again how I grow my plants at almost no cost on my side. This is how I propagate my carpeting plants. So, this is an invitro cup of Monte Carlo. As you can see, it’s quite small, but this is not a problem. And to be honest, I probably even don’t need all of it. The best way to propagate it is to use one of these. This is a special container for plant propagation. But don’t worry, you really don’t need to have one. I very often use just common plastic containers or even empty plastic cups to do that. Here I’m showing you an example with Tupperware. It really works pretty much the same. But anyways, I’m using this one because I simply have one available. Before we start, here you can see the comparison of the size between the container and this invitro cup. So you can see how big of a difference we are talking about. So the first thing I do is fill it up with river sand. It’s not mandatory, but I do that to rise the plants a bit so it will be easier for them to reach the light. And second reason is that I want them to anchor themselves to the sand a little bit. Why? because this makes them a bit heavier and much easier to plant in the future because it will be impossible for them to float to the surface. If you have any experience with planting Monte Carlo, you know exactly what I’m talking about. In the next step, I’m covering the sand with thin layer of active substrate. This will be our source of nutrients for our plants. I usually use the leftovers from my other builds, so I don’t buy anything specifically for this reason. You can see that I really don’t have to use that much. Just cover the sand more or less evenly and it will be okay. And we are ready to plant our carpet. I’m using Monte Carlo because I had one available and I didn’t want it to go to waste. And most important, I want it to be ready for my next project that will require a lot more so I can propagate it for free instead of buying four in vitro cups in just few weeks. Because this is an invitro plant, we need to prepare it first. So, open the cup, place the entire plant in water, and simply wash all of the gel. After the gel is gone, divide the plant into smaller pieces, and we are finally ready for planting. Luckily, you really don’t have to be very accurate. The plants are not going anywhere. They will not float or get moved by any of the fish obviously. So just spread it evenly in your container and we are done. This is the easiest planting ever. This is how it looks like for now. Really nothing special. And you can actually see that it started to melt or even rot a little bit. This is because it was really ready to be taken out of this in vitro cup. So, good for us for saving this plant. And as a final step, you need to spray it with water. I use quite a lot like you can see right now on the screen. Make sure that all of the plants and entire substrate are visibly covered in water. After you are done, you can place the cover of your container. This will keep the moisture in the container all the time. And once again, it works also with other containers and other plants. You can see that for this one, I’m just using plastic foil as a cover, and it really works just fine. And the last step to do is to place it under a strong light. I always use the light from my main tank. It’s quite strong and I’m having it on anyways, so there is zero added cost. No new light, no extra space, no electricity. It worked for me in the past for Anubius propagation projects, other carpets, and it will work for Monte Carlo for the next weeks. All I have to do is occasionally spray it with water and make sure that it doesn’t dry out.
And this is my reward. Just look at this plant. It’s so healthy and so beautiful. I have to say that it does require some time to look like this. I think it was around six or seven weeks, but wow, was it worth it. I almost don’t want to take it away or destroy it. I think that before and after shots speak for themselves. And look at those roots. You will never get that from Invitro Monte Carlo. And this amount was more than enough for my next project. So if you’re curious how I used it, stay tuned for my another build video.