How Many Plants?

[Cheerful Dragon]

While browsing round a local stockist of aquariums, etc., I picked up a booklet by sera called 'How to set up an aquarium'. OK, some of it was advertising for sera, but it also contained some useful information. There was one section that gave me pause. When the booklet talked about planting an aquarium it gave the following formula for calculating how many plants you need:

length (cm) x depth (cm) / 50

In this case, depth is distance front to back as opposed to height.

I've been looking at an Aqua One 620. The dimensions are 62W x 39D x 72H. Based on the equation, that means I'd need 48 plants, which seems rather a lot for an aquarium of that size.

How many plants should I put in an 2ft aquarium?

 

[5teady_2012]

In my 2ft tank, i got a mixture of plants and altogether there is about 15, they have all grown at diffrent levels, for example the water wisteria has grown right to top of the surface while some others have only grown 4-5" and others 8-9".

JUst looks good at all levels rather than loads same hight bunched together.

 

[rdd1952]

In my experience, it seems to be easier to start with a lot of simple stem plants like anacharis, amazon sword, wisteria, hygrophilia, etc. They are relatively easy to grow with normal lighting and aren't terribly expensive. Once you get a good stand, you can start taking some out (you will have to prune them anyway) if the tank seems too crowded.

 

[Mikaila31]

That is a strange book you have. There is no set rule for plants in a tank. The first thing I would is read the pinned topics in the planted tank section. The amount and types of plants you can keep all depends on your lighting, CO2 levels, and fertilizers. You could fill a tank up with plants if you have the right conditions, although it will start to effect the size of fish you could keep in the tank. The tank below for example.....

....needs to be trimmed really bad

 

[rdd1952]

Tank looks nice. One of the things I always thought was fascinating about wisteria is that the leaves change shape once the plants emerge above the water surface.

 

[Piscator]

Tank looks nice. One of the things I always thought was fascinating about wisteria is that the leaves change shape once the plants emerge above the water surface.

Lots of aquatic plants do this. Amazon Swords, Water Lettuce, and many others have different shaped leaves above the water line.

 

[BigC]

Dont forget your substrate, this is probably one of the most important factors in sucessfully growing live plants in your aquarium.
My recipie for what its worth is
Mix enough unwashed fine grain gravel (not pea gravel as its too open and certainly not sand as it compacts too easily around the root system) with one of the commercially available laterite mixes available to the hobby today such as JBL Florapol to a depth of around 30mm in your aquarium, then cover this with a layer of washed fine grain gravel to a total depth of 45-50mm
This will serve you well as a good basis on which to start...After that other essentials need to be taken into consideration such as the topics mentioned in above posts.

I hope this was of some help to you.
Regards
BigC

 

[Cheerful Dragon]

Thanks for all that information.

I've had a look around my local aquarium/fish stockist and I've spotted some plants I like. Once I'm ready to start my aquarium, I'll have a word with the people who work there and find out exactly what the plants are, how fast they grow, how to trim them, etc. The aquarium I'm looking at isn't that big, so around 15 - 20 plants should be more than enough.

 

[rdd1952]

One thing to keep in mind about plants is that if it has varigated leaves, usually, it isn't suitable for an aquarium.