Plant Ideas

[sarah40011]

i love my amazon swords, these i leave where they are, they are well rooted now but the rest of my plants are a prob. they are stem plants (wysteria and something else looks a bit like bamboo but skinny) and at first i just chopped the tops. this made them sprout roots all over it looked terrible. i read on here you have to pull them up and chop the bottoms off and replant so that was all fine but im not really into pulling it all out every month. what are some plants i could get that are fine to root down and i can trim them at the top. something nice and bushy to cover the back wall. thanks

 

[RadaR]

Dont know where you read that. Most planted tank folk will just trim the stem where they want and then replant what was trimmed off. Just imagine all those award winning scapes full of stems and having to pull out each stem when trimming. A nightmare to say the least.
Trim two thirds the way up the stem. When you come to trim that stem again, do it above where you cut before. Two shoots should emerge from a cut stem

 

[sarah40011]

in the pinned part actually... on plant pruning... and when i cut them thousands of roots shoot out midway on the plant. looks terrible. also one of the plant people mentioned it on someone elses question a few days ago...

 

[RadaR]

I think jimbooo just wanted to increase the amount of stems he had. Trimming the top (two thirds to half way up) will create a nice filled, bushy look.
Ariel roots indicate a possible lack of nutrients. My wisteria sent out loads of roots in my first year of fishkeeping when I didnt know anything about aquatic plants. Needless to say it didnt last long

 

[micko]

I'm not clued up on plants, I know you can make a moss wall if your wanting the back wall covered up.
I just cut them whilst still rooted and re-plant. Couldn't pull all of them out, would damage the rooting system too I'm sure, I could be wrong though.

 

[sarah40011]

you know you could be right on the nutrients part ive just ordered my first lot of ferts (not had to use them up until now) so yeah that makes sense ive ditched the wisteria tho, i'll stick with the bamboo type stuff and try again with trimming not uprooting. i knew i couldnt be pulling everything up every month lol ! thankyou for your help