New to live plants Need some help and suggestions

Curt

I am thinking of adding more live plants to my tank as it stands right now I have in my 20g

2 Large Java Fern
3 bundles of anarchis about 15 to 20 stalks. (this has grown 3 to 5 times its original size in 3 weeks.)
3 Anubias congensis ( i believe) all with 2 stalks / leafs however 2 of them have new growth.

All of these plants seem to be doing well in my tank and I am looking to add some more for variety.

The issue is my lfs does not carry very man types of live plants. I am going to need to buy them online.

I have been doing some browsing of threads and websites and I wanted to get some options on what I can add that will do well in my tank other than what I have.

I have been adding seachems flourish weekly.

My lighting is 8000k Full spectrim daylight t8 bulb that I run for at least 10 hours a day in the evening I swap out the bulb and put in a Actinic bluelight for about 2 hours. Sometimes more.

Where do you recommend or have purchased online plants? I have looked at aquabid but was wondering if anyone has a site they use?

Below is a pic of my current setup and advice of what to add or possily change feel free as I am new to live plants .


IMAG0296 by mich_m_20, on Flickr

Seanmiller09

Not sure where to buy online, Ive thought about it though since its kind of hit or miss at my LFS. Let me know where you end up.

I always think Java Moss is really cool, and is very easy to grow. just get a piece of fishing line and tie it to where ever you want it to grow until it takes hold of the surface, or drop a few peices of substrate in it and it wont move around on the bottom.

Pygmy chain sword is another easy to grow plant you could use as a slightly more foreground plant in your tank, it grown to about 3-4 inches tall, so it willl add some variety to the front/ lower levels. It is super easy to grow also. It does reproduce and spread fairly quickly, so be prepared to trim a runner or two from time to time.

You could also add a few floating plants as well, Water Sprite as well as Amazon Frogbit will grow just fine in your tank. Frogbit reproduces quickly which i think is really neat. Water Sprite will show more of the plant submerged in the water, but I think the looks of the dangling roots of the frogbit is really cool.

I'd shy away from the stemed plants, they are a pain in the neck to keep them trimmed back.

Hope some of these sugestions inspire some new ideas for your tank.

Sean

redchigh

Not all stem plants are fast growing (and very few are faster than elodea).

I'd try crypt wendtii, ludwigea repens, and dwarf sag.why do you put an actinic bulb in? You insist on looking at your tank for more than 10 hours a day?

jk, but I leave my lights on a 14 hr on, 10 hour off schedule. They don't mind.

Curt

I use the Actinic bulb for my glo fish and gives the tank a cool night effect. Is this bad for plants? or freshwater? The box said for fresh or marine tanks.

I love some of the suggestions

I do run two filters on my tank are any of these bad for any water movement?

Seanmiller09

Here is a thread that was recently started that you may find interesting in regaurds to filtration and water movement, I know I did.

filtration in planted 55 gallons

As far as actintic lighting, I don't think its bad, but I definitly would continue to not run it all the time. As I understand it, this is due to the fact that plants do not grow well under actinitic light, they need a balance of red in conjunction with the blue, whereas algea will use any light available. So as plant growth is slowed (or stoped), algae can begin to outcompete with the plants for nutirents and this is when algae becomes a problem.

Hope some of that info helps.

DKRST

Regarding where to buy, I found several places online. I purchased a 30-gallon "plant pack" at www.thatfishplace.com and, including shipping, each plant/bunch worked out to about 2.50/ea. That's half what I can get them for at my local "big box" fish stores. There are certainly many other places to buy, including from forum folks. Watch the shipping costs, some places are much higher than others.

Curt

I like the site! i Even like some of the packages but to do that they want to charge me 2 times for shipping because one plant out of the group is out of stock....

DKRST

If you order livestock from that site, I strongly recommend you phone the order in and and tell the operator you want to order livestock. You are then transferred to another ordering area and they'll walk you through the order. Their on-line "out-of-stock" info is not always current and they get plants in twice a week.

DKRST

Also - if they are out of an item, they won't ship until they call and ask you what to do (but they won't make substitutions either )

redchigh

I prefer sweetaquatics.

They have biotope packages, where (for a $15 charge in addition to plants) you have a lengthy discussion with a biotope designer, decide what kind of plants you want, describe your setup, and a pro will put a package together for your budget, tell you how to plant them, and give you a planting diagram for the best layout.

If not, you can just pick the plants yourself using this site, and pay about $1 per bunch, most rooted plants are $2-$3, and shipping is usually $10.