Eva's Aquarium Articles Page - Plants in my aquarium

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Plants in my aquarium

I have always loved plants in the aquarium. The aquarium itself looks soo much nicer with lots of green plants, and the plants themselves are interesting to have. I've had many different plants in the past since I have had several aquaria through the years, so I know what kind of plants I like. I never really liked the slowgrowing plants that much, maybe I just don't have enough patience. I prefer fast growing light green plants like Riccia, floating ferns (Ceratopteris) and Hygrophila difformis, but I also like java moss, since it is really pretty. I have had some really pretty Vallisneria once, but usually they didn't thrive so I gave up on them. Now since I read Diana Walstad's book I can have Vallisneria again :-)

Floating plants in my aquarium

Rather soon I found that floating plants was very interesting so I started to collect different kinds of floating plants. The aquarium itself looks soo much nicer with lots of green plants, and the plants themselves are interesting to have.

Floating plants are good to make cover for small fish fry, and to provide shade for plants that do not need too much light and to fight algae. There are large floating plants, some that keeps mostly under water, and some that need space above water too:-) Also there are many small floating plants.

Floating plants have a big advantage over normal aquatic plants - they reach the air, thus being able to get some nourishments directly from the air. Especially this goes for carbon dioxide, something all plants needs for their photosynthesis. Since carbon dioxode is readily available from air the floating plants usually can compete with fast growing algae and even win the fight :-)

Thus floating plants have their uses, and they are also often very pretty.

Plant fertilizer?

Plants need fertilizers in order to grow. Some come from the fish, but that might not be enough.

I have mainly low tech planted aquariums, so I have plant nourishments in my aquariums, but that stays in the botton layer. The few aquaria I have now that are not converted into low tech aquaria I add some PMDD into just the keep the plants growing.

Algae in the aquarium

I've never ever really had problems with algae in any of my aquaria. I think that is because I always follow one símple rule - I use floating plants! If I see just one little piece of algae, I will go directly to a good aquarium shop and buy some floating plants, or I ask a friend for some if I don't have enough already. Usually I have floating plants in all my aquaria, so if I see a small algae in one of them I move some floating plants to that aquarium. It works like if the floating plants steal whatever the algae is living off. I read somewhere that the plants are better made to compete when the conditions are stable, so I never mess with the water in the tanks...

I should mention that I always have plants in my aquaria, I don't use filters and I like to breed fish.

Low tech and high tech planted aquaria

As I was looking for info about growing plants in aquaria eventually I found out that there are two main ways to actually get a planted aquarium with thriving aquatic plants :

The high tech way using the CO2-system they were talkning about at the aquarium shop that I felt was not for me, too much work and too much money.
The low tech way - that I had never heard of before - that really sounded intriguing. The low tech way is cheaper, involves less work, and seemed very interesting.

I thought about it for a bit, and after reading a book about it, written by Diana Walstad, I quickly decided to try the low tech way. On th 20th of April 2006 I started a 56L low tech planted aquarium. It looks great so far :-)

In august 2006 I had at least 6 low tech tanks, and they are working wonders - the main thing to remember is to put in A LOT of fast growing plants when starting up...