Natural

[ReverendShmoove]

I have an aquarium with the usual Petsmart decorations in it. I'm going to get a 2nd aquarium but I'd like to go with live plants & some rocks. Is it difficult to keep live plants in an aquarium, not only to keep them alive but to clean them?

 

[Balloon Fish]

not that hard unless you don't have money or patience. The one thing i would do is recomend a lot of research on ferts and how much you need to put into the tank and all the equitment. If you want a nice planted tank then the lighting might cost you a little bit and then the co2 depending if you go diy or pressurized then there is the ferts. When you say keep them clean do you mean clean of algae? or just dangling poop on the leaves? If you dose the right amount of ferts then your plants will grow fast enough to outcompete the algae so it stays clean but if your not doing it right then algae can take your tank over fast. The difficulty of keeping plants in an aquarium realy depends on the plant, there are some plants like anarcharis that don't need any care and then there are plants that require all this trimming and the leaves gets everywhere and they need a certain amount of co2 in the water and a certain amount of lighting to even survive and things like that. In a planted tank most people classify the tanks by the amount of maintence/equitment they have in it so if you have like 4wpg (watts per gallon) and pressurized co2 your tank will be a high tech tank and maybe a high maintence tank meaning you have lots of equitment and lots of work to do every week pruning your plants etc. If you have a 3wpg your tank is considered moderate lighting and keep a wide range of plants but not as wide as the 4wpg but usualy the 4wpg plants need a lot of care. In 3wpg usualy the plants are pretty fast growing but of course it depends on everything else like co2 and ferts. Usually beginners like to start off at 2wpg unless they are born to be a aquarium planter and have a lot of money then otherwise they start small. At 2wpg you can't keep as much plants as a 3wpg tank can but still there are some plants left to choose. At 2wpg it is normaly considered a low maintence planted tank because usualy at 2wpg and lower people dont use co2 and maybe every week throw some fertilizers in and without co2 plants don't really wanna grow as fast as when it does have it. If you are a begginer and plan to have more tanks i would say start off at 2wpg/low maintence tank/low tech and this will give you a chance to practice and get some experience on what kinds of plants you can keep and stuff and if you mess up or don't like it you dont lose that much money . Even if you don't plan on getting a new tank you can always update the stuff and add co2

heres a site to get you started in case you don't know where to start http://www.aquariumplants.co.za/fertilizer.htm it gives you lighting info, fertilizer info, and some co2 info, and plant propogation.

 

[FroggyFox]

You can also check out the tab at the top of the page that says "freshwater plant profiles" and read through some of them that might be good beginner plants or fit what you're looking for. There's an entire plant forum on the board here that you can read through for other advice also. This link is to some threads of our freshwater plant articles: http://www.myfishtank.net/forum/showthread.php?t=19379