Advantages of having a planted tank?

DavidZ

What are the advantages of having a lightly planted (low light tank) as to not planted at all?

WisFish

I have a planted tank for three reasons: 1) I have less algae with live plants 2) the fish act more natural around live plants 3) I like the way the tank looks with real plants. As for the second reason, the fish like to hind in the plants and aren't afraid to swim into them.
The trick to having live plants is figuring out how involved you want to get and determining which plants will grow in the setup you create.

steelerfan

Water quality in general is much better with live plants, they swallow up ammonia and nitrites like crazy, as well as adding O2. To me it's the only way to go for that and the reasons already posted

DavidZ

So the bigest thing is the water quality, less water changes?

steelerfan

Depending on your set-up, yes. Low light, low tech tanks can be virtually maintenance free, under the best of conditions. Higher light high tech set-up that inject CO2, add fertilizers, etc have to do big (50% or better) WC's once a week, plus a fairly regular pruning schedule. Kinda depends on your goals and your budget. If you're not much for the water changes, the lower light direction is the way to go. Try to get and read "Ecology of the Planted Tank" by Diana Walstad, good book on the natural approach, also look at sites like plantedtank.net & aquaticplantcentral.com in the "el natural" forums, lots of info there. If you wanna go the high tech route, there's lot there for that too, also see barrreport.com, real good high tech knowledge there. Either way, water quality, fish comfort and health is vastly improved with live plants. HTH!

DavidZ

Thanks for great info