Veteran aquarists: what plants did you start out with?

[clownbaby]

Primarily I am asking those who have been in the hobby for 20+ years, but anyone is free to share!

Were aquarium plants easy to find? Which species were more common? How did you find hard-to-source or uncommon plants? What was common before the use of more modern planted aquarium tools & techniques? Just tell me about what the plant scene was like: the benefits, the struggles, and the things in between. I really am curious. 

And, finally, if you'd like to share, what old school technique do you think should be more mainstream in the plant side of the hobby?

Thanks! Ryder

[gardenman]

A bazillion years ago, I'm talking the 1960s WT Grants pet department days, the plant selection was Anacharis (now elodea) or an odd bunched fern-like evergreen thing that seems to have disappeared from the market. A local mom-and-pop shop sold water sprite. There wasn't much else out there. Some places might have an Amazon Sword plant or two. There were no options. Aquarium plants weren't a big thing. And Banana plants were common also.

Edited 15 hours ago by gardenman

[Odd Duck]

We used to dig Vallisneria out of our local ponds and scrape our thumbnails done each side of every leaf to remove all the snail eggs we could find.  Kept it in buckets for weeks to quarantine and would still get snails.  We could get Anacharis/ Elodea, sometimes hornwort, Java moss, and Java fern, occasionally Amazon sword plants.  Also sometimes Cabomba and I think water sprite.  This was starting in ‘75 for me.

The biggest difference from then to now is lighting, by far.  Also aquarium specific fertilizers were unheard of back then.  I used to deliberately put my tanks in part sun to try to get more light for the plants because the old incandescent bulbs were never even close to enough.  When fluorescents became available it was a nice step up, but LED’s were absolutely a game changer.

[Justnotrook]

I’m probably not a veteran aquarist but I’ve been in this hobby for 3 years now. But anyways, the best plants I started out with has to be Anubias barteri and nana. Along with Amazon swords.

[MWilk]

In the early 2000’s I bought a pack of plant bulbs that had no label and planted them in my gravel with a sun (eclipse) catfish. I don’t see those in pet stores anymore. 
 

the one that grew must have been some sort of aponogeton species, it would grow obscenely large leaves, then die back to the point of disappearing. I’d find the bare bulb floating around a few weeks later, then it would sink, get buried, and regrow. It did this over and over for years.