Is this a decent deal?

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hulkamaniac

Aquarium Advice Freak
Joined
Jun 7, 2006
Messages
455
Location
Wichita, KS
None of the LFS here in town seem to have a very decent stock of live plants. I was looking liveaquaria.com and found this plant pack. The description says, "The Standard Plant Pack comes with the following plants: Micro Sword or Dwarf Hairgrass, Anubias Nana or Anubias Barteri Round Leaf, Java Fern, Red Cryptocoryne or Green Cryptocoryne, Water Sprite, Anacharis, and Cabomba. "

I've got a 75g, but I'd prob get the 30 gallon pack and wait for the plants to grow and propogate accordingly. The pack comes with one specimen of each plant except for the cabomba and ancharis. It's got two each of those. Price is approx $45 shipped. Does that sound like a reasonable deal? or are these plants stuff I'd be better off avoiding?
 
To be able to answer your question, we need to know more about your tank. Lighting, CO2, and Ferts in particular.

Also you're better off planting heavily from the beginning, rather than planting lightly and letting it grow in. You'll have a lot less problems with algae that way. Getting a lot of fast growing inexpensive stem plants will help with that. Once the other plants are more established you can slowly start removing the ones you don't want to keep and replacing them with other plants that you do.
 
The two I'd be worried about are Micro sword and Cabomba...I think they need alot of light. Cabomba may be ok under medium light, but I'm pretty certain micro sword needs high light to thrive. It would help to know your lighting.

Having one crypt and one anubia doesn't do much for you....I don't think you'll have alot of plants from this package. If you are worried about price, check out http://www.aquaticplantdepot.com]Aquatic Plant Depot. They have great prices on plants and its only $10 for shipping. I'd get a few of each type of crypt so you'll have a nice little group. I like having a 3-4 java ferns to make a group also. I'd get a couple bunches of Cabomba and Anacharis.

You may be ok with this package, but IMO you'll need more plants then this.
 
Well first it would be helpful to know your light levels and also what you want as far as a planted tank. High maintenance, fast growth or lower maintenance slower growth. As for price, not bad but I can't really comment there as I have never ordered plants online.

Personally, I like your selection but it seems kinda small for a 75. If you have really high light, 250 watts of CF or more then they should grow and fill in rather quickly if you have eco complete. Some Rotala, a couple hygro, maybe a crypt lucens, and some other plant to really set off the tank: Baby tears, moneywort, Alternanthera reineckii.

Or just get the mega pack 30 gallon pack just for the variety so you have something to choose from when you are aquascaping and planning your layout. I just think that the variety is better and if your LFS ius as limited as mine is you will be looking for more plants in a month anyway.
 
I'm running 150 watts on two fixtures on the 75 gallon tank. I'm putting together a DIY CO2 reactor right now and trying to get the kinks worked out of it.
 
First of that's a healthy amount of light for your tank. You'll definately be able to grow any of the medium and low light plants. Might even get away with some of the higher light plants depending on the specific type lighting you're using.

Based on this information I think you could find some much better plant packages that will have more variety and be better suited to your lighting. Over half of that package is slow growing low light plants. These will make it very difficult to keep algae at bay, especially if you stick to your plan of planting sparcely and letting them fill in. Many of the plants that fish_4_all mentioned would go a long ways to filling in this gap.

Did a little bit of browsing. There are a couple of plant packages on this page that I think you might like better. In particular I thought either the "50 to 60 gallon plant package" (which is on sale) or the "55 -75 Gallon Aquascaped Layout" could be quite nice. There's a lot more fast growing stem plants in these packages, and the quantity of plants seems better suited to your tank size. Please note that I haven't ordered from them before but have heard great things about them when it comes to their CO2 equipment. Haven't really heard anything one way or the other reguarding their plants.
 
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