Aquarium Plants

Maintaining Live Aquarium Plants

Aquarium plants can make your fish tank look more vibrant and interesting. Maintaining live aquarium plants poses can pose new problems for Aquarists. Plants need Carbon Dioxide to grow.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the most important nutrient that you need to keep aquarium plants healthy. CO2 is produced by the waste products within the fish tank, like fish excrement, excess food and as by-product of bacterial action but this is often not sufficient to keep plants in good condition.

Therefore many people utilize a system that puts CO2 into the aquarium. It is a good idea to regulate the CO2 either using the system or manually because fish will suffer if there is too much CO2 in the water. Rough guides for carbon dioxide suggest that 30 to 45 mg per litre of water is enough for aquarium plants to thrive but over 100mg per liter is too much for fish.

Plants need an adequate lighting source.

Normally aquarium plants would derive the light source from the sun but in the case of aquarium plants the sun may not be available so an artificial source is needed. The light source should provide a full spectrum of light to the plants. Popular types are mercury vapor or metal halide lights

Aquarium Plants need a good substrate.

A substrate is the type of gravel or sand that you use in the fish tank. The substrate must be deep enough to allow the roots of plants to take hold and keep the plant firmly attached. You want the substrate to have a depth of about 8 cm.

Most fish have a preference for soft or hard water, if the water was to change due to the substrate the fish could become stressed or ill.

If a fish likes soft water then the top layer of substrate would be a lime free gravel. Under the lime free gravel a liner layer of nutrient rich gravel could be used.

Why Are Your Aquarium Plants Dying

Live aquarium plants can be a beautiful addition to an aquarium, whether you have it stocked with fish or not. But many aquarium owners who have trouble keeping their plants alive finally give up populate their aquarium with artificial plants.

Not enough light. Light is very important to an aquarium plant.

Failure to secure the plant roots. If the plant is new, however, the browning leaves may simply be the plant adjusting to it’s new home. Most plants experience “environmental shock” when being transplanted from one place to a brand new place.

Plant crowding. Aquarium plants need room to grow. In a crowded aquarium, you have too many plants fighting for too few resources.

The wrong aquarium plants in the wrong environment. Plants are living things. Not all animal stores or fish stores are set up to deal with plants. To most of them, plants are just a sideline. If many of the plants that a store has are yellowing or brown, or if the plants seem to be loosely planted and not well cared for, it’s probably best to look elsewhere.

I wrote a guide you may be interested in reading: aquariums, fish tank supplies