What would you plant in this 55

[Chiclid addict]

Here is the stocking 

2 discus 

1 angelfish 

1 rope fish

1 dwarf (I believe) pleco 

I want a light carpet and a couple plants that float at the top like Lilly pads 

I would like it to be a medium planted tank kinda like this picture but with a light roof also any idea of price to do this 

[anewbie]

One of my favorite plants is a prinz kleiner sword. It has deep purple but easier to grow than purple aflame sword. It is also fairly small at 6 to 8 inch tall - not one of your monster sword plants. Another plant i like quite a bit is aponogeton boivinianus. This is a deep (dark) green plant that does get moderately tall - maybe 18 inches so would be a nice background plant. If you don't mind trimming routinely two stem plants that are low maint are mexican oak and pogostemon stellatus octopus - both will grow quite tall - but can be easily snipped. If you let pogostemon break teh surface it will produce a pleasing purple flower.

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However for floating plant I would consider banana plant, red root floaters or frogbit - for carpet plant one my favorite (but it takes a long time) is Echinodorus Parviflorus Tropica - this is a sword plant but it doens't look like 'grass' like micro sword or dwarf stag and it stays lower than dwarf stag but has larger leaves and rich green colour. For myself as this plant begins to spread i've been pulling the dwarf stag (which i'm not a big fan of). Another interesting carpeting plant is monte-carlo (but monte carlo is easily disturbed).

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One thing to keep in mind about floating plants is they can create a food trap which can reduce water quality.