Goldfish safe plants

[HooKooDooKu]

Any new ideas on some plants that stand a chance with a common goldfish in the tank?

I'm about to upgrade the 10gallon to a 20 gallon. The primary resident is a common goldfish. The currently tank has anuba, wisteria, and valisneria. The anuba and wisteria have faired very well. The val... well it's all planted behind the hollow log, and there isn't any val that is taller than that log right now.

I tried some water sprite I got from my betta tank, but he pulled that up instantly.

I know one of the other suggestions is java fern, but any time I see that around here locally, it looks terrible, like it's not well cared for.

BTW, the 20 gallon tank has a pair of 30" T5 NO flouresence, 36 watts total.

 

[dmoney87]

I have amazon swords in my 29g goldfish tank.. but myne is a fancy ocasionally he will dig one out but he never eats them..

 

[mackdaddy81]

I have all kinds of plants in my goldies tank and they rarely touch any of them. I have microsword, amazon sword, water wisteria, yellow cabomoa, ludwigia peruensis, bannana plant, corkscrew val, moneywort, java fern, and willow leaf hygro.


I think one of the reasons is that I started my fish out with plastic plants, so they learned that they can't eat the plants. Now that I have live plants they don't seem interested.

 

[jsoong]

Commons are definitely more destructive to plants compared with the fancies. The "have plastic/unpalatable plants first then desirable plants later" trick don't always work. I did that & my plants were fine for years. Then last summer, my daughter fed so little over the holidays that the fish must be hungry enough to try some of the plants ..... so my Hygro jungle was completely decimated & never grew back fast enough to overcome the eating!

Other plants to try in addition to Java fern would be Hornwort & crypts. <For crypts, I have some biggish river rocks around the roots so they don't get uprooted.> I never had luck with swords ... but maybe I just had "tasty" varieties.

 

[FastFly67]

My fishies even ate my fabric plants i had in my tank. made an absolute MESS out of the filter. even had stands wrapped around the impeller on the filter