When to add live plants

[DavidK]

I'm patiently waiting through my first cycle and have a question about adding live plants. Currently I have some plastic plants in that I already own but my desire is to migrate to live plants.

When is the right time to add live plants? Should they be in as part of the cycling process or do they go in after the fact along with the fish?

 

[malkore]

They can be added now, and should be added, since you are cycling with fish. Teh plants will use some of the ammonia produced during the cycling process.

You will still have to do daily water testing, and likely daily water changes, to keep ammonia as close to 0ppm as possible, ditto for nitrite levels.

 

[Cooter]

I looked around and did not find any specs on your current setup, so I am going to ask a few basic questions. Lights, what and how strong, substrate, what and how deep?

I planted my 20H with plants from the get go and did not see any spikes of any kind. It is now going on 7 weeks and no deaths. Knock on wood 8)

 

[Simpte]

I looked around and did not find any specs on your current setup, so I am going to ask a few basic questions. Lights, what and how strong, substrate, what and how deep?

I planted my 20H with plants from the get go and did not see any spikes of any kind. It is now going on 7 weeks and no deaths. Knock on wood 8)

Ditto to what both posters said

 

[Hyrules]

Just hope your fishes doesn't like you plant i wasted around 30$ in living plant to see my fished slowly eat them even if i the guy a the LFS told me that the fish would'nt probably like them. ( too hard to eat )

 

[7Enigma]

Ouch, that's a shame. I'm in the same boat, currently don't have any live plants, but have been told my barbs are avid plant eaters. I'm going to go the cautious route and get 2 or 3 plants and see what happens. I'll probably end up with a nice mix of real and silk plants...

 

[Simpte]

Barbs eat mostly microphytes, not macrophytes. They have been know to eat R. wallachi (same goes for SAEs). What type of plants were they eating?

 

[malkore]

Even herbivorous fish can be kept with live plants. Its all about finding plants that they don't like to eat, or are too hard to eat. rotalla wallachi is a good example of a type of plant that gets nibbled to death. Fine, needle like leaves.

Mayaca, foxtail, cabomba, and ambulia are all 'easy to harm' plants.