Plants - first time planter

[jason19]

Hi all,

I've found this forum super helpful for getting my first tank up and running.

I have a few ornaments in my tank but now I feel a few plants may be good as I plan to add some fish in the enar future. Currently, I have a 10G tank with 1 DG and 3 platys. Most likely i'll be adding a few guppies to try not overstock it as per the 1 inch = 1 gallon rule.

My question here is that, what is the best beginner plants? I have read about anubias plants etc. At the moment, I have a plain stone/pebble substrate. Will most plants require a soil bed? Any hints or tips would be great.

Thanks.

 

[Aiken Drum]

Anubias dont require any substrate. You can simply tie or glue (cyanoacrylate) the rhyzome to a piece of rock or driftwood to weight it down. The same with java fern. My java fern just grows and grows, i throw tons of it away. Its bullet proof.

You could eventually fill out a whole tank taking cuttings from a single java fern.

 

[KaylNeko]

Anubias is a good one-- it's pretty, there's varieties, and it's low light and didn't need much attention. You can fill a tank with anubias and get a nice looking scape (ooh... that's not a bad idea. I may do that...)

Java fern is the same. I just get annoyed with having to plant all the babies when they bud, but I have a Java fern forest in one of my tanks.

There are some stem plants that do all right in pebbles so long as they're gravel sized--elodea/anacharis, bacopa sometimes.

Also floating plants--frogbit, salvinia, water lettuce. I personally avoid duckweed as much as I can because it spreads like crazy-- I'm currently fighting it in one tank where it hitched a ride in on some salvinia *sigh* It's in all 4 that got the salvinia, but it really seems to like one in particular.

Bucephalandra is another option. It's similar to anubias in most ways--low light, attach it to something and don't bury the roots--but a little pricier.

 

[jason19]

Thanks guys - Aiken Drum, you're like my own personal mentor

I ordered 1 x anubias, 1 x java fern, 1 x bacopa australis and 1 x bacopa caroliniana. Don't know if this will be plant overkill for a 10g tank but I can always trim them I suppose.

Is there any adverse affects to a tank that plants can cause or are they generally beneficial overall?

 

[KaylNeko]

Beneficial. Worst that's happened for me with plants is the occasional snail hitchhiker, but I like snails. I have lots. Don't overfeed and the population stays controlled (I say as I eye the snail explosion in my two small tanks and sigh).

There a neat truck with the stem plants-- so your bacopa-- that when you trim them, two stems grow from the cut. Then you can grow them for a bit then trim both stems and have the same response, and so on, and so on. A little work and you can make a bushy stem plant grouping. Just replant the trimmings and they'll continue to grow.

Somehow I missed this trick until recently, so I intend to try it out in the new tank I'm setting up and see if I can get it to work.

 

[jason19]

Beneficial. Worst that's happened for me with plants is the occasional snail hitchhiker, but I like snails. I have lots. Don't overfeed and the population stays controlled (I say as I eye the snail explosion in my two small tanks and sigh).

There a neat truck with the stem plants-- so your bacopa-- that when you trim them, two stems grow from the cut. Then you can grow them for a bit then trim both stems and have the same response, and so on, and so on. A little work and you can make a bushy stem plant grouping. Just replant the trimmings and they'll continue to grow.

Somehow I missed this trick until recently, so I intend to try it out in the new tank I'm setting up and see if I can get it to work.

Perfect KN. Thanks for the help. This may sound a silly question but can any snails go in an aquarium? Reason I ask is that my house seems to attract an occasional one in the garden and, if it wasn't harmful to the snail or the fish, I wouldn't mind popping them in.

 

[KaylNeko]

Perfect KN. Thanks for the help. This may sound a silly question but can any snails go in an aquarium? Reason I ask is that my house seems to attract an occasional one in the garden and, if it wasn't harmful to the snail or the fish, I wouldn't mind popping them in.

I don't think land snails do well in aquariums. You need aquatic snails--pond, bladder, ramshorn, Malaysian Trumpet, nerite, mystery, and apple snails are the main ones. The first three are the most common plant hitchhikers.