Looking for plant suggestions my fish will not eat!

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wishbone

Aquarium Advice Activist
Joined
Mar 14, 2005
Messages
183
Location
Phoenix, AZ
As the title says I'm looking for some plant suggestions my fish will not eat. They seem to destroy anacharis and horn wart. They've been happily munching on my slowly dieing amazon sword. The anubias and java fern they seem to leave alone, not that they haven't tried to eat it. Although they pick at the java from time to time. Anyone have some additional suggestions for easy care plants that might look good in the tank? I was thinking about just going with some more java fern and anubias since I've had the most luck with them, but it would be nice to have more of a variety in my community.

tank specs:

110g tall tank
2x65w coralife CF 6500K (run 9 hours a day)
about 3 inches of small pebble substrata
2 canister filters
2 power heads

current fish:
3 pineapple swordtails
3 clown loaches
2 clown plecos
2 yo-yo loaches
3 longfin skirt tetras
3 koi angels
1 D/D zebra lace
1 pearl gourami
1 king tiger pleco

Plants:
"monster" anubias nana
java fern
marimo balls
amazon sword (slowly dieing)

The pictures are a little out of date. I've lost some fish and the plant in themiddle of the tank changes frequently, but you can click on my sig for more pictures of the past.

TIA
 
I don't believe 'amazon fern' is a true aquatic.

if its' an amazon sword, then it's your lack of lighting that's causing death. You have 130watts over 110 gallons, and it's a tall tank, so you're realistically looking at 1wpg or less.
plants you can keep: java fern, anubias nana, some crypt species (pretty much the common ones you find you can keep), and that's really it. anachris won't do well under 1wpg unless you float it (and i'm not a fan of that, but some are)

there are a few varieties of java fern though. the common one you see, then there's a narrow leaf version, and also the 'lacy' windelov variety.
 
You're right it's amazon sword and not fern, I fixed that. I had it as fern in the first part, but sword in the listing. =) Short brain fart, sorry. I really didn't expect it to do real well, but almost immediately the fish started eating it. It was cheap, so I thought I'd give it a shot to see if it would survive.

As far as light goes, I thought that when you used CF that it worked out a little better than requiring 2w per g? I've never really investigated that, but I know I've seen a couple of people mention it. Is this a fallacy, or is there some truth to it. I'd add another coralife 2x65, but I'm affraid that my algae growth would really rocket?

I'll look at plantgeek for some of the crypt species that might be lower light. Anacharis did well and grew really fast, but was constantly being eaten by the fish (which ones I'm not sure).

Thanks for responding Malkore!
 
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