Can You Have Both Live And Fake Plants

I have set up my first aquarium 75 G with fake plants and decor( just didn’t feel confident enough to try real plants)
Been up and running and is fully cycled and fish doing ok. Thinking I would like some real low maintenance plants so ordered some Marimo moss balls and an anuibis attached to some drift wood. Is it ok to mix things up?

 

IMO real plants just look better. If you're going to mix I suggest silk plants over plastic. They look more realistic and lack the sharp points and edges that plastic ones can have.

 

Yes its fine to mix things up tho if your going to go with fake choose silk instead, there are however lots of beginner plants that are very hard to kill if you want to try out them in the future.

Anubias, java fern, Java Moss, limnophila, anacharis

 

I had anacharis, java moss and java fern when I was a beginner and none require anything special but still manage to look great

 

I had a few "nicer" plastic plants in my tank mixed in with real for a while. If you have nice ones and you bury the base of the plastic in the substrate, it was almost impossible to tell at a quick glance. However, the florescent, super-fake plastic plants looked awful next to real plants. I noticed my snail seemed to enjoy the plastic ones more.

 

I noticed my snail seemed to enjoy the plastic ones more.

Plastic plants are a magnet for algae and biofilm

 

I'm a beginner, and Anubias, java fern, and water wisteria have been thriving in my tank.

 

You can put real and fake plants together, but most would say it looks a bit silly. I personally prefer live plants. However, you don't seem to have any oddly bright or unrealistic looking plastic plants in your tank, so you may find that combining live with fake plants is fine for you.

Marimo balls will look fine either way IMO And for the others, simply attach them to your décor and see how things look!

 

It's your tank you can do whatever you want! Some think putting driftwood in looks silly, some think putting a sunken ship in looks silly. In 1990 everyone had blue gravel and signs that said "No Fishing" in their tanks. If you want to put a bunch of blue artificial plants in there with live plants it's your tank! Yes, artificial will attract algae and stuff but so does live and the nice thing about artificial is you can take it out and wash it off (no soap though!) or easily throw it away and replace it. Think of it as an extension of your room. I don't have a contemporary room but maybe you like that, there's no rule that says you have to have contemporary only in your room or that I'm not allowed to add some wonky piece of furniture in my room just because it's not the exact same as the rest. If you like your artificial plants and you want to keep them (whether they're plastic or silk) go ahead and keep them and display them proudly with your live plants and whatever decor you want to add!

 

I have set up my first aquarium 75 G with fake plants and decor( just didn’t feel confident enough to try real plants)
Been up and running and is fully cycled and fish doing ok. Thinking I would like some real low maintenance plants so ordered some Marimo moss balls and an anuibis attached to some drift wood. Is it ok to mix things up?

Hi! I have a mix of real and fake plants for the same reasons. Honestly, everybody thought my real plants were fake and fake ones were real ha. I’ve actually found som of them useful for tying down my real plants to that can’t be buried. For example, I tied a java fern to one and now they’re mingling with each other.

 

I don't see why not

 

Your tank, your project! Have fun with it! (and your tank looks lovely btw)