Isabella

Can anyone explain to me how do people get such a nice "grass-like" plants in their tanks? Do you plant so many tiny plants on the bottom so that it looks like it's grass, or do you buy few plants and wait until they grow into a little "meadow" like the ones on the pictures below. I found these pictures on the Internet also. I love tanks like these! How do you get your tank to look like this

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Isabella

And how the does one clean a tank with a bottom like this

Gunnie

They are beautiful! You will just have to research all the different aquatic plants and find the ones that folks use as a ground cover. Click below on the plantgeek link, and look around. If you click on aquascape placement, you can find the ground cover plants and their requirements. To have a tank like the pictures you posted though are probably high light tanks, and you will have to upgrade your lights if you only have the strip lights usually sold. Compact flourescent lights are probably the cheapest upgrade lights, and you can spend quite a lot on lighting. They may also require CO2 to get the desired effect, and that's whole 'nother can of worms. My suggestion would be to find plants for the lighting you already have and go from there. Check and see how many watts your bulb is over your tank, and if there's more than 1 bulb over the tank, add the wattage together and divide by the gallons in your tank. That gives you watts per gallon (WPG). 1 WPG is low light, 2 WPG is medium light, and 3+ WPG is high light. Most standard lighting gives a tank low lighting, and low light plants are the easiest to grown and maintain. Have fun!

http://www.plantgeek.net/plantguide.php

fletch

What I did is start of with 3 small bunches and let them grow. They take quite a while to grow but do start to shoot off small plants if you wait long enough. The best thing to do I think is to get enough plants to cover every 4inches of your tank and then they will fill in the gaps. failing that, just do a small patch of tank at a time. I think it will be as easy as hoovering gravel to be honest. Dont try to do it before the roots have set in otherwise youll have a of a time replanting everything!!!

Isabella

Thank you Gunnie. This website is very helpful and informative. And yes, I know that if I want a lot of plants, I will have to use appropriate lighting and CO2 ... and probably a lot of other stuff. Right now I have only few plants and a regular light and regular gravel. I will have to do a lot of reading and research on planted tanks now. However, if I use low-light plants, even if many of them, do I still need a good light? Or regular light will be OK? Do I still need CO2? Is it expensive? Is there some special device I will have to use for CO2? I am completely inexperienced in this matter. What gravel should be best for a planted aquarium? And should it be finely grained or largely grained? Should I then be adding iron plant fertlizer to the tank on a regular basis? Any other additives I will have to be using regularly? How do I, in general, keep all plants alive and well for a long time?

Gunnie

All my tanks are low light and low tech. I do not use CO2 because if it malfunctions, you could have a CO2 dump, and all your fish will be dead. I am not that into the plants to put my fish at risk. You can have a beautifully planted low light tank. This article will tell you more and show you examples of what you can do with low light plants:

Setting up your first planted tank

Isabella

Thank you Gunnie I also have read about CO2 dangers and will rather use your advice. You're right. Besides it's better since it's cheaper, right? LOL. So I will stick with low-light plants, with some appropriate substrate/gravel and just a regular light; plus whatever the necessary fertilizers and additives for the plants will be. And of course my pebbles, rocks, and wood! Thanks

atmmachine816

With a low light tank you can still have medium to high light plants. I'm planning on adding CO2 to my 29 along with ferts to help the plants but I plan on making my 10 gallon a planted tank with 2wpg ferts and CO2. You don't really gravel vacuum carpet plants, they do that for you, you just need to vacuum the tops of them but you need to make sure they don't grow a lot of algae because sometimes they can be seseptical to that. They just take over the bottom for you, I'd like to get riccia but don't think I'll ever have the righht requirments for it, I plan on getting micro sword or dwarf hair grass for my carpet plant on my 10 gallon and might try it on my 29. Here's my DIY CO2 link if you want to look at it as soon as I get it all figured out I'm going to post my recipe and everything you have to make.http://www.fishlore.com/Forum/index.php?topic=2270.0

jim55379

Nice plants isabella. I bought 6 seeds from wallmart and the Darn things never grew. I waited about 1 month. I use plastic plants now.. Congratualations... I am Jealous.

jim55379

What a beautiful spotted nose kitty on your pic.

Jason

What are u jealous about, that isnt her tank. She was merely wandering how u grow grass like plants in aquariums. Not saying her tank doesnt look good because it looks great to be honest!

Isabella

Haha guys, lol Jim, the tanks above are NOT mine! However, this is what I'd like my future tank to look like (preferably without CO2 injections for the safety of my fish). Of course, I'll probably never manage to create a tank this good looking, lol.

Jim, that's my cat (Tiger) on the picture. I love him to death! (Well, not literally, lol.) He doesn't really have any spot on his nose; maybe it looks like he has on the picture. He's a regular brownish tabby with some black stripes, and his nose is pink I also had another kitty, but she's gone now (there is a post about her in "cats" section if you want to know what happened to her).

Here are some more pictures of Kitty and Tiger (I miss her so much ):

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Isabella

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Butterfly

Beautiful Kittys and pics as usual Isabella.
Carol

jim55379

Those are beautiful cats Isabella. I already know about your cats and don't want to think about it. I emailed you a few times in the past and you posted it. It's too sad and I Love all animals. (maybe better than people) . I will check out the cat pics again on the cat part of this site.