Eventual plant list for SA biotope

Too bad I'm not getting my Guyana leaffish (one day.... when tanks are not overrun by babies. or in order to make that happen LOL)

I'm in the initial planning stages of converting my livebearer breeder to a SA/CA biotope. It's a walstad tank with organic potting soil, heavy gravel cap. I already have a bunch of swords in it, but I need to remove some of the plants it currently houses and trade them for others.

The final plant list is:
Jungle Val
Cabomba
Amazon Frogbit
Green Myrio
Pygmy Chainsword
Radican Sword (does anyone know how tall these get? They're listed as a background plant but the ones I have are TINY)
Assorted sword sp.
Fissidens sp (possibly Fontanus as a cheat because it's the easiest to find in the US)

The only ones I'll need are the jungle Val and the fissidens. I have most of the other plants in various tanks and can easily relocate them to this one, but it'll be nice to let them grow out a bit where they are first. Especially the frogbit.

Since the tank has potting soil, I'm letting some water wisteria and cyperus helferI suck up some of the extra nutrients at the moment. This tank will probably be complete, plant-wise, in the next few months. Of course then I'll be changing out the fish stock lol

If there are any other recommendations or if anyone knows of a reason I shouldn't use any of these plants, please feel free to post I'm actually looking for a reed-like plant similar to cyperus helferi, because I love the look, but it's native to SE asia and I need a "new world" tropical plant to take its place.

 

I love when you talk scientific plant lingo after reading that section on alleopathy seems you never know what plant hates another plant until they're in the water. She gives an example in her book. It escapes me at the moment which plant Sp. She refers to.

Guess in a few days I'll be speaking plant genus if my head doesn't explode, reaching my storage capacity already. Sheesh.

I take it you don't rinse your soil, I don't plan on washing my dirt. (Still sounds weird ) Though after it's in the tank for a few days I imagine some of the ammonia will evaporate.

Well regardless I'm sure it will come out awesome like your other tanks you showed. Do any of your tanks use Co2?

I didn't see Ceratophyllum on the list

 

Don, you just solved the mystery of why "Cabomba" was growing in my local waterways in my extremely non-tropical environment. Wow those two look similar... but it must be Ceratophyllum growing up here at 6000 feet and NOT tropical plants LOL

I might have to consider adding some of that to my list

Also no, I didn't bother mineralizing my soil. It's winter here. There's no way it would ever have worked anyway. I have gravel and wood mixed in it as well as a cap, so that'll just have to do. Plus with all the fast-growing plants I have in there I figured it wouldn't matter much. They'd eat any ammonia before it even hit the water lol.

Jungle Val vs Duckweed is probably the allelopathic reaction you were reading about. Apparently true jungle val does not like duckweed at all and murders every bit of it in a tank (I know people argue otherwise, but after seeing the vals at my local store I'm convinced that they're often mislabeled. Vallisneria is found on almost every continent in various forms and some of them look almost identical so it's hard to tell what you're buying sometimes.) I'm hoping nothing kills off my frogbit that way lol. I have a precious small colony left after a QT melt killed off a bunch, so I'm still waiting for it to come back.

 

Ah ha so you didn't go to the black market after all! Glad I could be of service even if it's indirectly

 

Lol! You cray cray <3