Live Or Fake Plants For A Newbie?

[drewh]

I have decided on starting out with a 29 gallon long tank as my first tank. Thanks to everyone that responded to my questions and pointed me in the right direction.

Now can anyone point me to threads or articles on if a newbie (first tank) should use live or fake plants?

Drew

 

[Corleone]

Not sure about articles, and there's plenty of threads here on the forums, but I'll just run it down anyway:

If you're not going for the heavily planted aquatic garden look, you don't need special hardware for live plants. They'll do alright in just about any substrate. As for tangible benefits, they absorb ammonia and nitrate, effectively becomming a part of your biofilter. They don't release ntirite or nitrate like your bacteria do, either. In general, they out compete algae for nutrients. They don't make your water dirty, they actually help keep it clean, and they really don't add to maintenance. In my area, live plants are actually slightly cheaper than quality fakes, and some of them can be proliferated easily by cuttings or runners.

As for downsides, there's two:

First, hitchikers. You can bring in unintended inhabitants with plants, usually snails. However, snails are an effective cleanup crew (better than most fish sold for that purpose), most will only eat damaged or dead plant matter and not kill off your plants, and it's not terribly hard to control their population and prevent a runaway infestation. They tend to settle in to an equilibrium, as they can only get the food that your fish don't get to. Some types are very beneficial in planted tanks, and most bring some benefit to the aquarium.

Second, some fish just can't be kept with live plants. Silver dollars and other herbivorous fish may eat them, some algae eaters will eat healthy plants if they're hungry, goldfish and any cichlid that moves substrate will uproot and destroy them.

 

[drewh]

Corleone,

So basically go with live plants unless I want to have herbivorous fish , algae eaters, cichlids, or goldfish in the tank?

Drew

 

[drewh]

Also if live plants is the way to go for a newbie... Any recommendations on what plants?

Drew

 

[lilfishie]

As a plant newbie myself there are 2 that are doing well in my tank
Cabomba
Egeria Densa

Both are now running across the top of my tank and need trimming down about 4" probably more

 

[Aphotic Phoenix]

Java Moss and Anubias are extremely easy and hardy.

*Edit*

If you are an absolute beginner...some low-light plants are extremely easy, and definitely worth a shot...but a well planted tank requires a bit more work and investment in lighting and other systems. Yes, good looking fakes might cost more individually than real plants...but fake plants can't die by mistake like real plants can. That's where real plants can become costly, especially if you're buying from a lfs that doesn't always sell true aquatic plants.

 

[webber555]

Java Moss and Anubias are extremely easy and hardy.

*Edit*

If you are an absolute beginner...some low-light plants are extremely easy, and definitely worth a shot...but a well planted tank requires a bit more work and investment in lighting and other systems. Yes, good looking fakes might cost more individually than real plants...but fake plants can't die by mistake like real plants can. That's where real plants can become costly, especially if you're buying from a lfs that doesn't always sell true aquatic plants.

Just so I don't create a new thread.... are plants best put in at the start of a fishless cycle, when setting up, or at a later stage?

 

[Corleone]

Corleone,

So basically go with live plants unless I want to have herbivorous fish , algae eaters, cichlids, or goldfish in the tank?

Drew

Algae eaters are usually fine - there's a few that might cause problems, but I have a bristlenose and otos in my planted tank and they leave the plants alone entirely. Not all cichlids are a problem again, I have angelfish and keyhole cichlids with plants - do a bit of research and see how much substrate excavation they do, as they vary a lot. Ones that are really bad about tearing up plants probably won't be much better with plastic plants, either, as they'll dig them up and move them around the tank.

You can put the plants in right at the start of a fishless cycle. They'll love the cycle, and might grow better than you'll ever seen them grow again. You might notice ammonia dropping sooner than expected and nitrite/nitrate not rising as you'd expect - that's the effect of the plants. As I said, they do become a part of your biofilter. Don't worry about the effect, the goal is the same - to drop an ammonia dose to 0 ammonia and 0 nitrite in 12 hours.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

Just so I don't create a new thread.... are plants best put in at the start of a fishless cycle, when setting up, or at a later stage?

short answer is it doesn't really matter!

long answer - plants will feed off the ammonia that you are adding to the tank to cycle it, while this is a good head start for your plants and people often find that live plants added while fishless cycling do quite well, this does mean that the amount of ammonia getting to your filter bacteria is reduced and it can skew your results while cycling. However to have enough plants to have a tangible effect on the readings you'd need a really full flourishing underwater garden. So you can safely stick in a few bunches of plants without it making any difference to the cycling process.

another benefit is that the high levels of ammonia when cycling encourage algae growth, if you've got live plants in there they will compete with the algae and often outcompete them meaning you get less algae when cycling that you would have had otherwise.

a lot of people also find staring at a bare fishtank for 6 weeks or so while cycling is boring as hell! Having some plants to tinker around with can help relieve this to some extent.