uprightandlocked

Hi All,

Following your advice to add live plants to my shrimp tank - I spent this afternoon finding a few to place in my tank.

First, I performed my weekly water change on my shrimp tank which also included removing several of the plastic plants I had in the tank.

I found live plants at Petco that are in little plastic containers and "Snail Free' per the packaging! Into the tank went some Aqua Fern, Umbrella Plant and White Ribbon plants along with some Wisteria. For now, they are all on one half of the tank because they're small. I'll let them grow into the tank and then begin aquascaping. I have no experience keeping live plants and have no idea what these plants will look like as they grow - so all I did was put the biggest three in the back and the rest in the front. I'll rearrange as I need to. So far, the shrimp really seem to be enjoying this new side to the tank.

Thanks for the advice! I hope this works out. I understand that microorganisms grow on these live plants. I had always assumed they also grew on the plastic and silk ones. This isn't true?

aquarist48

Hello Uprightandlocked. Good bacteria grows on all surface areas of your tank. It doesn't matter if it's live plants, fake ones, ceramic, glass, substrate. It's on everything. Most of it is concentrated in your filter/media and the substrate.

Below are a couple of links that may help you with your plants. I have my first live plants as well so I can't offer a lot of first hand information. I have Java Moss and Anubia thanks to one of our members that was kind enough to send it to me.
Best of luck and hope you can share some photos sometime Low Light Aqua Plants
PlantGeek.net - Echinodorus amazonicus
Ken