Buying Live Plants

[Rubyuk]

hi Guys

This will be a stupid question to all the experienced planted tank members on here (I did consider posting in the newbie section)

I'm wanting to move more into live plants,I currently have the odd one and annubas on driftwood etc but have mostly fake plants.

I'm after clarification on the different ways you can buy plants on the internet so that i don't end up buying more/less than I was after.

The options that seem to pop up are plants on their own,5's/25's/bunched and pots.

Now whats the difference and what is best to go with?

i'm thinking or assuming that 5's is 5 individual stems of one plant so 25's is obvious,but what is the difference between 5's and 25's to bunches and potted? ie do you get more in bunches and pots?

I'm sorry but it's confusing to a planted tank newbie like me

 

[anshuman]

first of all, what is the size of your tank? what is the substrate? what fish are you going to keep later on? what are the lights? do you want to go high-tech or low-tech (like fertlizer bottles+liquid co2)?

Answer to all this will give you idea how to go about planting, people actually draw a diagram of aquascaping the tank, decide on plants in the figure and then go ahead buying it .

 

[OohFeeshy]

I asked Plants Alive before and it seems to depend somewhat on what plant it is. Crypts, for example, they said were best to order by number because they don't bunch very well. Generally you may as well go by number, or possibly bunches for stem plants like hygro. You don't usually get much more in a pot, it depends where they're from though- something like Tropica, you probably would get more but you pay a lot more too. A lot of the time they're just potted to order, i.e. not actually grown in pots so there isn't any difference.

 

[Rubyuk]

cheers guys

My tank has been established for 14 months thereabouts.

180 litre Juwel Vision (the lights and filter etc that come with the Juwel tank)

At this stage very much only looking at a low tech set up in terms of plants ie no co2 but adding ferts etc as required

 

[mtv8dmarine]

Answer to all this will give you idea how to go about planting, people actually draw a diagram of aquascaping the tank, decide on plants in the figure and then go ahead buying it .

In this respect Tropica.com has a few templates available from which to choose. So if you're looking into plants and layout you might want to check out the templates there. Without a doubt, any research on plants will eventually lead you to the website for more information at some point anyway. =)