Aquarium Plants

[Dom~]

I'm a total newbie when it comes to plants... In and out of Aquariums. I had a cactus once, but it died because I never watered it enough. I'm a very low maintenence person therefore I'm loooking for a plant that would best reflect me. Basicly I was wondering what type of plant, if there is any, that I could throw in water add some light and grow? No CO2 crap, pH, w/e ya know. Half of my lighting is the average fluorescent lighting for indoor use, and the other is whatever lights came with my aquarium hoods. 3 of my tanks have a water temp of 72F and the other one 79-80F. I've heard that plantkeeping is a very hard from various people for the average aqua hobbyest as my friend was never successful in keeping any for long. I (being incapable of growing a cactus) would like to prove everyone wrong, by sucessfully growing some sort of aquarium plant that could live and thrive with my fishies.

 

[Pixie25]

ive heard java fern is one of the easiest plants to grow. you can also buy it attatched to bog wood and it looks very nice.

 

[Dom~]

Would I be able to attatch it to something already in my tank? Say.. a fake plant? And if so would u know how? Can it just float or is it supposed to be held by an anchor?

 

[Inchworm]

Hi Dom

I know what you mean. I don't have any fancy or hard to grow plants because I keep corydoras, which are bottom feeders and I need to keep most of the bottom clear. They also do best without extra light, so I am limited to the plants I can keep with them.

However, I've had pretty good luck with Amazon Sword plants, java fern and java moss. Another interesting thing that, surprisingly, does well for me are Marimo Moss Balls.

I'll move your thread to the planted tank forum so the experts there can advise you.

 

[zig]

How big is the tank and how many watts of light have you in the hood? even low light low maintainence plants will have certain needs, light will be the main factor.

 

[Dom~]

Well my 30 gal (under 19 inches tall) has 2x 20 watt (2 footers) , 55 gal (under 19 inches tall) 2x34 watt (4 footers), 10 gal ( 1 foot tall) has 14w aqua-glo (15 incher) and my 45 gal(22.5 inches tall) has a single 20 watt aqua-glo (2 footer). My tanks are all under 19" tall except my 45 gal. I'm soon to be getting a 72x30x18.75(high) tank.

 

[zig]

Ok so lots of tanks........auctually most of them are pretty well set up for low light plants, low light plants are the plants that will require the least maintainence, they can survive in low light and therefore grow slowly, and what ever fertiliser they require can normally be supplied by either the fish food or the fish waste, so pretty easy once you get the lighting correct.

Ideally you want light somewhere between 1 to 1.5 watts per gallon (watts of light over the tank divided by the volume of the tank in US gallons = watts per gallon or WPG) with the correct spectrum tubes for growing plants (anything between 5000 to 7000k would be fine check out the lighting article in the pinned section for more info on individual tubes and the light they give off) all of your tanks will be fine with the correct tubes with the exception of the 45 gallon, you may need to do a lighting upgrade on that tank to have a better chance of success with plants.

There are many plants to choose from the most commonly found would include, Java ferns, Java moss, Anubias species plants, Amazon swords, lots of different Crypt species plants.........here is a link that lists many more and it also has pictures to give you a better idea, click on the pics to get more info.

http/www.plantgeek.net/plantguide_list.p...y=1&filter_by=2

Even simple planted tanks with Java ferns can look quite good IMO.

Anyway hope that helps if you are unsure of any aspect just ask.............