dbrown918

I'm setting up a new 20G FW planted tank and I need some suggestions for easy to maintain and beautiful plants that will also go along with the fish i'm going to add. I'm going to be adding neon tetras, x-ray tetras, and cories. My substrate is a 3" thick layer of flourite. Are there any plants that these species will love? And also, will one ultra-sun 15 watt 6500K bulb be sufficient or overly sufficient in maintaining the plants?

Llama

Easy to maintain plants I can think of are:

Java Fern: (Looks a tiny bit like an amazon sword plant)
Java Moss: Its moss, grows anywhere, over stuff
Anubias: These have large beautiful leaves, grow well - they need to be attached ABOVE the gravel (which may be good if your cories like to deroot the plants).
Elodea Canadensis (Candian Pondweed): This grows like wildfire, doesn't require any care whatsoever... you'll be picking out cuttings within a fortnight.

Those are what I recommend. I don't understand what you mean by 'go along with' though.

Butterfly

you have approx 3/4 watts per gallon. this amounts to low light. Here are some low light suggestions
http://www.plantgeek.net/plantguide_...=1&filter_by=2
Carol

dbrown918

Thanks!

Butterfly

Welcome!!
Carol

coffeebean

i had great success with canadian pond weed in low light

Fish_wise_man

Well 15 Watts could probably be able to house low light plants. Like Java Ferns. They don't need so much light and plants such as the Riccia and Duckweed will grow well in low light, also they are floating plants.

If you want to house better plants such as Amazon Swords, or plants with more of a reddish or purple color. You will want to have fluorescent light bulb (which I think you have one already) you should get a light bulb with more than 30 or 40 Watts. At Big Al's Aquarium Services, they have a plant system with almost 1,000 watts and they have 3 very bright and strong lights. So I can tell you that people can have stronger light bulbs for their tank. But I'm not meaning that you should go and pay a lot of money to have strong light bulbs just for a small aquarium.

Good luck