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I want to have some more taller plants in this tank (75 gallon). Temps are normals 83-84 degrees. There is a lot of Amazon sword and some red flame sword, some jungle Val that is just starting to grow after 6 months.one Anubis and some land moss one the right and left, also frogbit. I would like to some tall flowing plants along the back. I am likely removing one of the sponge filters and going back to one sponge and the canister. I have more than enough light. I’m getting better. With plants but not super great. Here are a few more pictures sorry I just feed the bottom feeders so the the water is not very clear.

What soil to use for planting a tank? I see many on the forum here use miracle grow performance organics. I have a bag however its mostly pieces of wood, more like dirty mulch than soil. I can order from Home Depot, Lowes or Tractor Supply but I don't want to get another bag of sticks.

I love plants. More than plants, I love their roots! They weave themselves so gracefully, and always change the landscape in subtle ways. Here is to you, roots!

After the really bad ammonia spike one of my tanks had I've lost all but one fish. My plants are also dying back. I've been doing 50-60% water changes and now getting 0 ammonia an 1 ppm nitirtes and 30ppm nitrates. water sprite is turning black and the sag and crypt are just melting. I did trim off the healthy branches of the water sprite to attempt to save and those are floating in a well established tank and seem to just slightly be discoloring. Will the dwarf sag, water sprite, and crypt rebound or should I just plan on replanting once the tank stabilizes?

By providing our aquarium plants with liquid fertilizers and root tabs to grow, do we actually decrease their ability to use the nitrites and nitrates in our water? Does it lower their water purifying abilities because they don't have to work as hard to get nutrients?

I was unexpectedly gifted a bunch of plants. I don't know what most of them are, and the person who gave them to me doesn't know what any of them are. I know I have an Anubias - a big one - and one of those banana plants. I'm pretty sure one is a sword plant, and there's a bunch of moss. Everything else is a big question mark. I don't know whether to be thrilled about this or not, as I have a Co-op order on its way. Well, I said I wanted heavily planted, looks like I'm going to get just that. I need to remember to leave space for my sponge filter. What do I do with big handful of moss?

Well my last green neon tetra developed ick and didn’t make it through the ick-x treatment. It really sucks. so now I need to sterilize the plants, filter and heater. I have read about the ways to use bleach to sterilize the tank and equipment, but am not sure the best way to sterilize the plants. I don’t want to compost or throw away, I have some great plants in there just floating. No substrate. There are also 6-7 red cherry shrimp in there—shrimplets to full adults. what to do with them? Thanks you guys—you have all been wonderful. sincerely, Nanci

I really want to get a great planted tank but I can't seem to be able to feed my plans without feeding algae. I wouldn't mind the algae but it grows on the plans and suffocates them. My lights are on timers and I'm adding flourish liquid fertilizer and root tabs. I've been trying to keep NO3 around 20 to 30 ppm and I've been pretty successful. My lights are on a timer and go on and off so they're on 8 of 12 hours (two separate two hour breaks in the day) I started using some gluteraldrahyde (the ingredient in easy carbon) to stop the algae and it's slowly killing it back but I'm afraid 1) it's harming the thin leaf plants 2) as soon as I reduce the dose I'm going right back to growing more algae. What should my next steps be?

Hello! You may have seen the Tiger Lotus bulb in the Aquarium Coop store and wondered what that could look like in your tank. I wanted to take a minute to show some images of how my plant has done so you can see if this is something you'd like in your tank. This post is solely for the purpose of showing what the plant can look like and is not going to get into how to properly grow it, ideal tank for it, nutrients, etc. as I'm sure you can find that elsewhere and I'm in no way an expert. Here is the link to purchase the item: https://www.aquariumcoop.com/products/tiger-lotus-bulb-only?variant=29485958627397 I bought my bulb back in January 2020 but the growth you will see isn't from that entire time. My tank was new, I battled some BBA (and you will see some still lingering in the photos, I'm renewing my effort to eradicate it!). The lily always grew but it would stay small as the old growth always died and the new growth would replace it. Now it's grown like crazy. Photo 1 This photo shows the tiger lotus when it was small and just starting to grow. It's very compact and adds some nice color and texture to the aquarium. Photo 2 This photo is part of the tiger lotus today but this portion of it is a good example of what I'd consider the middle stages of the plant. Although it starts compact it grew to about half the height of my tank and created a nice dome look. Again, this specific photo doesn't do the middle stage justice but this just shows the height. Photo 3 Once your tiger lotus really starts to get going it decides it wants to go to the surface of your tank. The new lilies it creates go straight for the surface and keep their lily small and curled as they go up your water column until they reach the surface and then they start growing. As you can see in this picture, it seems like almost all new lilies go for the surface. Photo 4 Here is another photo showing the lilies up at the surface of my tank. Photo 5 This is a close up look of Photo 2 showing that, once established, the lotus starts to spread and continuously sends out new lilies. Photo 6 This picture shows the top of the tank. Closing Thoughts I hope you enjoyed seeing how this plant grows and what it could look like in your aquarium. It's been lots of fun watching this plant grow. I just let my plant grow however it wanted to and never cut back or trimmed it until this month. These photos show the raw version of the plant but keep in mind that once it gets to this stage those lilies will block out light for the bottom of the tank. For some people that may be perfect but for me I needed to thin them out a bit but I still think it's very cool that and will continue to have lilies at the top.

I have a 29 gallon non fully cycled tank with the plants below. I got Seachem flourish for free so I'm dosing it to the tank size once a week. I now have some red plants and wanted to make sure using prime and flourish with easy Iron would be safe. I also use root tabs. I have 3 on each side of the tank spaced out, so 6 total in it. I'm also getting a GH and KH API test kit in the mail tomorrow as the tetra strips don't seem right. I currently have 6 cardinals in the tank for a fish in cycle and double dosing with prime every 48 hours and no water changes. This is my 11th day cycling the tank and 4th with fish in. My substrate is half gravel and half Fluval Stratum. Water Ammonia - 2 Nitrites - 2 Nitrates - 5-10 - same as tap pH - 6.6 Temp - 76 GH - 75 Kh - 0 Plants Lobelia Cardinalis x3 Narrow leaf Chain Sword x2 Spiralis x2 Java moss x2 Anacharis x2 Normal Amazon Sword Flame Amazon Sword Red Melon Sword Bronze Wendtii Green Wendtii Red Wendtii Stocking 1 Beta 12 Cardinals - 6 in already 6 Harlequin Rasboras 8 Pygmy Cories 6 Khuli Loaches 1 Borneo loach Snails for days

Can anyone help me ID the plants in my tank? I'm terribly bad at buying and trading plants without much attention to their names. Now that I'm thinking of seriously aquascaping this tank, I feel that it would really benefit me to know this stuff! I will put pictures of what I have here!

For those of you who don't know or are confused, immersed is under water, emersed is growing out of the water. I haven't tried very many plants, but of the ones I have grown monstera deliciosa is my favorite.It's the big one by the way.

So I have a planted 20 gal long tank with eco complete and I’m looking to get 6 sterbai corydoras... I’ve read multiple sources that say you’re not supposed to gravel vac a planted tank... yet I’ve also read multiple sources that say if cory’s don’t have very clean substrate their barbels could become damaged and infected... I’m not concerned about the eco complete being “too rough” as much as being “too dirty”. Thoughts? TIA

I am curious if anyone has found a good solution to combining the orchid hobby with the aquarium? Mostly interested in finding a good solution to placing an orchid on top of a tank to draw in water without getting too water logged. I recently got into the orchid hobby (long time plant grower) followed by planted aquariums [MTS = 20 gallon & 3 x 5-6 gal tanks in my first two months]. However, I am trying to find an option to combine the two. Aquarium water is a great fertilizer, and several other plants do well grown partially submerged. I am not new to the idea that orchids do not do well with wet feet for too long, so I know it is going to require some designing of a water wicking container to balance the hydration. Has anyone come across a good solution to growing orchids along side an aquarium?

Recently I decided to put together a high tech aquarium. The aforementioned aquarium is a a 61 liter (H-40, L-45, W-34 cm), a good sized tank for light penetration. The equipment I use is as follows: Ehiem liberty 75 hang on back filter Chihiros A451 Plus LED light Future heater will be the 50 watt Dennerle heater (summer is hot here so my room is cooled to 24C with AC) DIY Sodastream CO2 system I decided to use Dennerle's Scaper's soil as a substrate, ended up using about 7 liters of the stuff, and dragon stone as the hardscape. This is the only image I have right after adding the soil and hardscape, please excuse the terrible quality. This image is 24 hours after setting up the tank. In this image I am using the Dennerle bio co2 system temporarily until I put together the Sodastream CO2. The plant selection at the time of taking this image is as follows: Anubias nana Cryptocoryne nurii "rosen maiden" Cryptocoryne wendtii "brown" Cryptocoryne scurrilis Cryptocoryne balansae Eriocaulon vietnam Hygrophila pinnatifida Bucephalandra sp. After all the parts for my CO2 system arrived I was finally able to put it together. This system consists of a 400g CO2 Sodastream cylinder, a TR21-4 to W21.8-14 adapter, and a CO2 regulator with a solenoid. Long term a large CO2 cylinder is better cost wise, but I decided to go with this system because I'm limited for space. The picture on the left is of the system in general, and on the right a picture of the adapter. This is the aquarium now, I've moved around some of the plants and swapped some out for others. The current plant list is as follows (would love if someone can identify the plants I'm unsure of): Cryptocoryne nurii "rosen maiden" Cryptocoryne wendtii "brown" Cryptocoryne scurrilis Cryptocoryne balansae Hygrophila pinnatifida Bucephalandra sp. (Dark green and reddish new leaves, it's the big one in the back) -unsure Bucephalandra sp.green (located on a rock just to the right of the filter intake) -unsure Bacopa colorata Alternanthera reineckii "mini" Blyxa japonica Nymphaea zenkeri (red tiger lotus) Ludwigia repens "rubin" Micranthemum Micranthemoides (pear weed) I hope to soon add Cryptocoryne wendtii flamingo and Pogostemon helferi. These are pretty rare in my country so they're a bit pricey and hard to track down. I'll update on the progression and stocking of this aquarium in the future. Constructive criticism and advise is welcome. Hope everyone has a fantastic day and thanks for reading!

*edit...my plants are not burnt, just planted actually, I'm just concerned since I'm new to this. Hi, been a long time out of fishkeeping, and first time trying live plants. I just got some hornwort I ordered online and of the two best spots to plant some in my ten gallon, one was next to the heater (Tetra 50w 2-10 gal). I bought them for my little colony of ghost shrimp since I heard they like it and I like the look of it. I've been searching the last couple days but can't find anything about the heater burning the plants? It does have a guard on the bottom. I've enclosed pics of where the one I'm concerned about is. I know the heater isn't in the best spot for even distribution, but with the rock there it was the best spot. My betta loves to sit on top of it, lol. Maybe he likes a warm tail... And....yes I know I have brown algae, my nerite loves the stuff on the sides and the shrimp love it on the ground and rock. My blue mystery covers the whole tank all day but doesn't seem to chow down on it like the nerite. It appeared about a week ago. If it gets beyond what my nerite can handle, I will scrape it off. The other pic is the hornwort on the other side of the filter. I can tell already that it's gonna be a mess to deal with! I got it originally for a dedicated shrimp tank that is on hold atm. Thanks so much for any info! Appreciate this group!

I got amanos to take care of my hair algae issue… which is now 95% gone. But they incessantly eat my plants! Especially larger leaves that have massive holes now- any advice? I already feed my bottom feeders daily (which the amano shrimp steal about 70% of that food too!) Not to mention: they also scratch the paint off my aquarium plastic decorations!!! I assume this is ok since they are aquarium safe? But it’s a bit concerning

I am setting up a new 10 gallon aquarium with five plants (for now) arriving on Friday from Aquarium Co-Op. I know incorporating beneficial bacteria from an established aquarium is good, but what's the best practice? Should I rinse them with dechlorinated water before planting in my tank? Thanks!

Hello fellow #nerms 😊 Alright - here's the sort of "story" :: Last Tuesday (the 20th), all was fine and well at least at / around 9:30 that morning, in all 7 of the tanks. Looked in each tank, and watched the fish in each one for a moment or two -- and fes each tank as usual. Cut to 2:55pm (so just over *5 HOURS* later) - I was doing water changes on the small tanks that day and I got to this one particular tank. ((the tank I am referring to in this post is a 5 gallon Marineland Eclipse (hexagon) tank - so not one of the bigger ones)) Unplugged the things I needed to unplug before removing water, then reached in to begin removing the duckweed…….. But the water was warm. Way way way way too warm. ( and then I did a big "no-no" ) I tapped the side of the tank --- nothing moved. Tapped again - still nothing. So then (within the same 5 seconds) I looked at the thermometer… As you can see ----- yeah. It was ACTUALLY as correct of a reading as it could give me. The water in this tank, had reached OVER the 104°F 'cut-off'. There was actually steam coming off the top / surface of the water (circled) : So I started to look about the bottom of the tank, and yup. Sure enough. Dead. The few fish - which consisted of 4 (older ,virgin) juvenile female guppies, 2 young juvenile female platys, and 2 {left of originally 7} Pygmy Corys; and all of the snails (bladder/pond & ramshorn). Just…dead. And of course it was also a fully planted tank. So, after coming to terms with the fact that everything living in this tank was now dead - I turned my attention to the plants. I don't know how long the temp had been as high as it was, I don't even know when the absurd increase had even begun. I DO know it was NOT that warm at 9:30 though - because I reached a hand into this tank and pulled a few bladder snails out to feed to my assassin snails. Anyways. But I ended up doing was removing absolutely everything from this tank, the substrate, the filter media oh, the Sponge Filter, and obviously all of the plants as well. Because of the number of snails I knew were in this tank, and that nothing, and I mean nothing, had survived this malfunction, I was not willing to risk keeping the substrate, which I'm sure is for obvious reasons. And at this particular time, I did not find myself feeling too worried about the plants that were in the tank, because at that time none of them looked to have been damaged too horribly, although there were a few leaves on one of the crypts that had started to yellow and become almost see-through. So after I replaced everything (except the sponge filter - but this was very thoroughly cleaned) I replaced the plants back into the tank with some root tabs. They stayed green --- for about 3 days after this. And now, this is what they look like : So my question? How do I know if these plants are REALLY dead, and not just that their leaves have all melted away (I've had plants that started with DOZENS of leaves, and the melt back, so much so, that only the bit that goes in the substrate with its roots was left -- but then EVENTUALLY they'd come back). Sooooo ARE they just completely done-for!!? ***also to note - the crowns of the swords are NOT mushy / soft -- but all the leaves (as well as most of the roots) on the swords, crypts, and apongeton plants , all basically feel like mush when you touch them*** this is just a pic of what it used to look like - vs - now:

Ok new here, just joined. I have a 29 Gallon 8 month old planted community tank. For fish 4 Zebra Danios, 6 fancy guppies (for the wife) 8 small Neon Tetras 6 Cory Cats, 4 Amano Shrimp 3 Nerite Snails. I have 0 Amonia 0 Nitrites and 1 or 2 Nitrates. I do weekly 1/4 water changes. Use Prime in the buckets of fresh water from the tap that goes back into the tank. Tap water PH is 7.0. For Filter I use a Fluval C3, and have small bubble wall air stone. I use Seachem Matrix and Purigen in the chemical chamber and Matrix in the wet/dry chamber. I keep my tank at 76 degree. I had a awful Green hair algae breakout. Covered all my plants. was dosing it with Api c02 and using Thrive-s for the plants. I was using a LED light but found out it was not full spectrum. I ended up taking out all my plants and replacing them with nice green new ones. Also replaced the light with a true Full spectrum 6,700 Kelvin light and put it on a timer. 8 hours even have it ramping up and down to start and end so full light for 7 hours. I have Easy Green Plant fertilizer coming. Should that keep my plants happy and healthy. Oh for substate I'm using Landen Aqua Soil Substrate for Natural Planted Aquarium. Pricey but supposed to be excellent. Am I on the right track? Any input? I can not use a C02 system in my apartment complex. Here's 2 pictures of my new plants and tank. Any input or am I on the right track? Sorry for the long intro.

Gonna be setting up a plant grow out tank. Will mostly be stem plants, although need to be prepared for rooted plants as well. Tank will be 20G high with sponge filtration. Temperature will be set 78* that is average for rest of my tanks. Light is Aquaneat LED full spectrum and will start with a 8 hour siesta schedule. This will be bare bottom and white background on 3 sides. For stocking I was thinking to keep it small and easy care, some danios, pond snails, and a couple mystery snails. Stem plants will be held against tank walls with airline clips @Guppysnailidea 😀 or weighted down to bottom. For rooted or rhizome plants I was thinking, using ACO easy planters this way I could keep them in their shipping pots or easily weigh them down inside them. Fertilizing with easy green and root tabs as needed. Is there anything I’m forgetting? Things to watch out for in a grow out tank? Any tips? or alterations I need to make to my plan?

I'm trying to cycle a new tank. Levels are ... Ammonia- 3-4ppm, Nitrites- 0, Nitrates- .25-.50, Ph- 6.8-7.0 My question is ... is it safe to put plants in now? Or should I wait until fully cycled? (plants- Anubias nana "petite", Cryptocoryne Lucens, Cryptocoryne Tropica, Dwarf Hairgrass, Cryptocoryne Wendtii Green, Mini Bolbitis (Baby Leaf), Christmas Moss) Thank you 😊

How can a plant need more CO2 than is normally available in water in a natural setting? 🤔

Hello, I am testing my water and I was wondering if ammonium being present in my water would contribute to the readings of the ammonia test in the API water parameter testing kit? My tank is fully cycled (tank has been set up for probably 2 or 3 months at this point) and I am working on getting it heavily planted. I would say that roughly a third of the canopy is covered in water lettuce and frogbit, About half or a bit more of the floor is covered in amz sword, moneywort, val, and dwarf sag. I have small tetras that I am feeding regularly to get them grown out. I know that the amount of food is the likely culprit for my increased ammonia levels. I am just wondering if the plant life is converting ammonia into ammonium in a way that is throwing my test readings off? date pH Ammonia Nitrites Nitrates temp Ferts? 09/21 6.4 2.0 ppm .25 ppm 5.0 ppm 74 F dosed 09/20/21 09/22 6.4 3.0 ppm .25 ppm 0 ppm 74 F dosed 09/20/21 bonus question if anyone cares to venture a guess/soluition: I recently started dosing with CO2 and my pH use to sit at around 6.9 to 7.0, its now sitting around 6.4; while i welcome my drop in pH i dont want it to bottom out on me while I am dosing the plants. The tank has tetra in it and they dont seem to mind. My kuhli loach is a bit of a recluse so i dont know how he/she feels about the drop. I am wondering if i should add some bone rock to the tank to try and organically bring the pH back up while still dosing CO2 for the plants. For reference my drop checker is still showing blue/green (i.e. still not sufficient levels for the amount being consumed by the plants in the tank) As always thank yall for lookin.

I just got these plants from the site a couple days ago and it seems like I have a bacteria growth of some sort on my plants I got a Bucephalandra "Green Wavy" and the "Windelov" Java Fern it's mainly on the Java Fern I can see , but I was wanting to know what I can do , I just dropped the plants a couple a days ago I don't want to kill them trying to kill the cotton like substance