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Novice Help with plants please


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I hope somebody else that can help me....So I just bought a brand new fluval flex 15 and I really want to do plants with it but I just don't know what works good with that type of tank and what you guys recommend and what do you think the best plants I should go with cuz I really do not know much about doing planted tanks and eventually I want to do fish but that can wait I really want to get the plants right 

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In my experience plants I’m told do well and are considered easy any grow anywhere for anyone die on me but plants I was told when I bought were hard and need a ton of stuff I don’t have or do are thriving. Find plants you like and give them a go you just never know. If they don’t take i buy different plants. I go into new plants without having my heart set on each so it gives me flexibility to scrap ones that hate me and find ones that like me. I know that’s not the help you are looking for but it opens up your options to have fun trying things you like but might not get. 
PS welcome to the forum. Glad you are here. 

Edited by Guppysnail
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Here's an Aquarium Coop article for top 10 beginner plants: https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/aquarium/easy-aquarium-plants

Any of those should work well in your tank and be fairly easy to maintain. Of course you can choose any plant you like, just be sure to research it first and identify its care requirements. You'll also want to think about the substrate you want to use for your tank. I use Seachem Flourite as my substrate with Easy Green and root tabs to fertilize. 

Edited by colo3000
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Guppysnail and I take a similar approach: buy a wide variety, and find out what plants work for you. I have had more plants fail than succeed for more years than I have had more plants succeed. Primarily because there wasn't great information out there, and because I was more focused on breeding than I was on plant maintenance. 

Now, I am more interested in beautiful plants than breeding, and my tanks reflect the shift in emphasis. 

At the beginning of my planted tank journeys, I relied on pothos,  spider plant, and dracaena to keep my nitrates down. As my health deteriorated, I began depending on plants more and more to keep my tanks balanced and healthy for my fish when I had flares, which means CO2 would be an irresponsible investment. 

I currently have pearlweed, replens, rotala, anubias, swords, hornwort, crispus, milfoil, bacopa caroliniana, ferns, and mosses along with hairgrass, and riparian plants like pothos, lucky bamboo, dracaena, and I just rooted a rose.

If you don't try, you won't know what you can grow.

Here's an image that was shared with me, that helped me keep more plants alive than have died for a few years now.

LINE_1590950663622.jpg.0f6a7d32e1fa878a1a8707991132a1fa.jpg

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On 1/8/2022 at 9:52 PM, Torrey said:

and I just rooted a rose.

I don’t mean to interrupt this thread. How did you do this. I would love to know how to propagate my roses in a tank. Could you message me or add it to my journal for others to see so it doesn’t distract from this thread pretty please with sugar on top 😁

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This is what I've learned, buy 3 or 4 different plants and add them to the tank.  See what melts and see what grows.  "Easy" plants have always died on me while plants that shouldn't do well in my water have thrived.  A good example are java ferns and red tiger lotus. Java ferns will not grown in my tank.  They turn black and die.  I can toss a red tiger lotus in and three weeks later its taken over half my tank.  My most expensive casualty was bucephelandra.  Moral of the story, just buy some plants and see what happens.  

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My advice is a mix of plants and scaping.... (take with a grain of salt!) A fairly easy scape idea involves putting an odd number of rocks almost 1/3 of the way from the front, adding sand in the front of the rocks, and sloping your substrate towards the back. Leave front beach clear with just sand and/or gravel. Then, add dwarf sagittaria and crypts on the "backside" of the rocks. Plant vallisneria in a line along the back of the tank. Anubias and java ferns can be attached to small rocks - and depending on size - added near rocks in the front OR between crypts and val. You can also do stem plants, like ambulia, bacopa, or ludwigia, between the crypts and val.  Swords can be added in the back, too.  I love dwarf sag and val because they propogate on their own so easily. Also, I recommend keeping the substrate pretty thick, so maybe 2-2.5" behind the rocks all the way to 4 or more inches in the back. This will make adding root tabs and planting (with tweezers) easier. Rocks can be replaced with a nice piece of driftwood with anubias, moss, and java fern attached. Keep in mind - pretty much all wood will color your water brownish with tannins. These are not bad for fish, but may not match the look you are going for...and can be dealt with by pre-washing and soaking your wood (depending on size) for weeks or months and/or using carbon and seachem purigen in your filter.

Also, I totally agree with the idea of keeping some pothos in the tank - let the vine/roots stay in the water, but leave the vine / leaves out of the water in the air. The roots will help maintain nutrients in the water column at a low level to prevent algae. Of course, this can be a problem when it comes to fertilization once you get there.

Another helpful tip that has worked for me is to add amano shrimp and nerites / ramshorn snails within the first week of the tank's set-up. These will help prevent algae before it is a problem. You can feed a TINY amount if you want - but this can help build beneficial bacteria in your filter and substrate. Also, do water changes VERY OFTEN in the first 2-3 weeks after set-up. These are tips taken from the Tropica app (https://tropica.com/en/guide/care/tropica-app/ ).

Finally, pay attention to how long your light is on. I set up a new aquascaped tank in October and actually realized I needed even less light than I was giving it. It now gets a total of 7 hours with "sunrise"/"sunset" and the plants are doing well - and more importantly algae is growing less and less. Each of us has to figure out what works for our plants / our fish / our lifestyles.

Like I said, take my tips with a grain of salt 🙂 Hope you found something here helpful!

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