zebra

I know that I am a newbie, but i thought that some of you may be interested.
Was at LFS today and was speaking with a woman who had a 50gal /55gal/ and 45gal. and has been a fish person for years.
She said that since she has added real plants to her aquariums she has not had a fish die.
Thought that it was an interesting little factoid, dont really know if realated, but lord knows the extra oxygen and vegitation in the diet cant hurt anything.
And I'll take real over plastic any day.
Have a Great Day. :

0morrokh

Could also be that the plants lowered the Nitrates. Real ones definately look better.

zebra

nice to hear that there are people out there that like real plants for their aquariums. I get alot of people telling me to use plastic. "It's alot less trouble", they will say. But I see the fish will also use them as an alternative food sorce, which really does not bother me, and like you said they just look better, a nicer flow.

0morrokh

Actually I must confess that my tank is not planted, but I'm going to add a Java Fern or two for water quality, and I'm planning an setting up a 20 gal long planted aquarium and move my fish there, and use the 10 gal as a Q tank. I was glad to find out that there are some plants out there that don't require that much work, like Java Fern.
I think that actually a lot of people on this forum have planted tanks, but I can see people being skeptical about it.

Isabella

I already said it somewhere else before - but I'll repeat. Plants help keep the water clean Not only do they provide oxygen, but they also remove ammonia and nitrite (and perhaps nitrate too, but less than nitrite). They also remove toxic heavy metals from water and help maintain the pH stable. So live plants are very beneficial to an aquarium. It makes sense what the woman said. Perhaps her plants keep the water much cleaner than it was before she had plants. That's why none of her fish die now (because they have a much better water quality).

EmpPleco

I only have one small real plant attached to driftwood but as soon as i put it in there, my pleco has been so much more active!!!!! I'm not sure if these are really related, but it seems like too much of a coincedence. But I like he change

Also,
zebra - you never have to disclaim your comments by stating that you're a newbie We don't care, we like newbies!!! To us it means that we have got another member to give us advice and someone to share helpful information with.

Welcome to FishLore!

0morrokh

Yes, we love having more and more fish geeks!