Is Too Many, Bad?

[tqfan]

there seems to be more plants in one of our tanks, than fish!

is it too much? can too many plants be harmful to the fish? guppies and tetras in the tank, along with 2 catfish.

are any plants harmful to these fish?

we had a problem with quite a few guppies dying a little while ago, and i wondered if it might be because of the plants.
however i was told that it was a 'guppy disease'.

the guppies looked like they were dead, lying on their side, but they were in fact still alive, and they'd occassionally swim slightly, before heading back into this dead state.

i'm not sure how to search for a disease, without knowing it's name, search engines don't tend to like long descriptions!

i thought maybe a water problem, but it's fine and the plants are thriving, we've managed to fill 3 other tanks from this one tank's plants!!
the tetras and catfish are also fine.

any ideas?

 

[xxBarneyxx]

There are plants that can be poisonious but I doubt that these would every be aquired from the usual sources. Depending on the fish not having enough swim room could be an issue but in general plants make a very effective biological filtration which actually improves the water quality by quiet a lot.

In theory I guess that overnight plants could release so much CO2 and consume so much oxygen that it suficates the fish but I have never heard of this happening (though it can happen if you leave a CO2 unit on overnight).

 

[Liam]

No you cant have too many plants in terms of fish health, as Barney said only if the plants are using too much oxygen at night, but if that was happening the fish would all be at the water surface so it would be easy to see. Guppies used to be one of the toughest fish available but are much weaker these days.

 

[mgamer20o0]

as long as there is swimming space your fine.... i have a tank i have to pull plants from just so there is space to swim. one section of the tank is all but closed off to them with plants.