plants?

[hartman57]

i was thinking about putting real plants in my established aquarium and i was wandering about the maintenance and the effect that they would have on my tank. i have a 45 gallon so. american and african cicled tank and thing seem to be going fine with it but i want to change it up alittle!! my fake plants just dont seem to have the right look or the affect that i want!!1 any pointers please let me know!!!! tahnks

 

[malkore]

Look at the sticky post at the top of the forum, and do a little searching on the site. Your general question on plants has been answered numerous times.

 

[youronlysin]

Is this what you had in mind?

http://dump.fibervault.com/Tank_Oblique_251204.jpg

This, in my opinion, is one of the most beautiful planted tanks Ive seen in quite a while. This one belongs to Travis Simonson who can be located on this website under that very username. If anyone knows anything about planted Cichlid tanks, this is the man right here! You might try looking at his profile and viewing some of his other posts. He does visit frequently, so hopefully he can chime in soon and give you some pointers.

 

[QTOFFER]

What kinds of cichlids do you have, hartman57? Some SA cichlids consider live plants a yummy delicacy, while some African cichlids simply like to dig them up.

First, check the wattage of the light you currently have - it is usually printed on the bulb.
If you decide to go with a planted tank, I would suggest starting out small and simple. Java moss and Java fern look nice, grow fast, and are nearly impossible to kill. From there, you can diversify to other low light plants like anubias and cryptocorynes. These plants are supposed to do well with as little as 1 watt per gallon.

A low light tank really shouldn't require much more maintenance than an unplanted tank. You may have to tinker with the lenght of time your light is on in order to strike a balance between keeping your plants healthy and preventing algae growth. So, you may find yourself scraping algae more often. Java moss acts as a mechanical filter and catches alot of debris - I have to swish mine around in a bucket once every two weeks. Gravel vaccing can be a bit more difficult with plants because of the delicate roots, but the muck that accumulates in the gravel is good plant fertilizer. And, of course, the plants will have to be pruned back every so often.

 

[travis simonson]

With the normal output fluorescents that come with most aquarium hoods you will be fairly limited in the types of plants you can grow. In most cases you won't have even 1 wpg, which doesn't allow you to grow many plants very well.

Suitable plants would include Anubias spp., some of the heartier Cryptocorynes, Java fern, Java moss, possibly Marsilea spp. and Sagittaria spp. as foreground plants. There are certainly others, but hopefully this will give you a place to start I've found all of these, with the exception of Java moss, to work well with African cichlids. For some reason they love to shred Java moss, although they show no inclination to eat it. As mentioned earlier it tends to catch a lot of detritus and this may be what attracts them to it. Vals would also probably work under your lighting conditions, but I would certainly not recommend them, as Africans seem to consider them a delicacy and will eat them to the ground, given half a chance.

Africans have a reputation for being very hard on plants, but I've found that, if you can keep the plants algae-free, your Africans will leave them perfectly alone, barring the noted exceptions above. I can't vouch for the behavior of any of the SA/CA cichlids, but I would guess they can be just as hard on plants as Africans.