Top Ten Community Aquarium Plants For Beginners

[P-Daddy]

Despite the fact that my tank is already planted, I have had varying degrees of success in keeping different plants, which I suppose is part of the beauty of being a beginner and experiencing the agony and the ecstasy of experimentation. I have noticed in researching aquarium plants that many different web resources have different lists of "beginner" plants, and sometimes these lists even conflict with one another! This community has provided boatloads of useful information to me thus far, and its members are truly some of the absolute most knowledgeable people in the hobby, so I thought I would submit this challenge to both your scrutiny and vast stores of supreme aquatic knowledge!

So if you are so inclined please create a top ten list of the plants you have been most successful with keeping and cultivating in the home aquarium. With that said obviously someone who has years of experience in keeping plants can keep virtually anything available to a hobbyist with little trouble, so in creating your list please consider the best plants for beginners to keep. Also please consider the community aquarium, rather than a specialized tank for the sake of creating a common ground. I also understand that depending on individual tank parameters (i.e. lighting, substrate, fertilization/CO2 regiments, livestock/stocking levels etc.) there is no uniform formula for success.

It is not necessary to rank your list on a scale of 1-10 (David Letterman style), just simply create a list of ten great plants and provide a little background information about them. Helpful information would include both common and scientific names for the plant, its biotope, whether it is considered a foreground, midground, or background plant, what type of substrate it prefers, necessary water parameters etc, other general info etc.

Other important things to consider when creating your list include how much light a plant requires, how sensitive it is to changes in water quality or temperature (hardiness), how sturdy it may be to abuse by fish or unwitting aquarists, how fast it grows, how picky it is in terms of spreadings its roots, if it can survive say a long weekend or 7 day vacation without fertilization.

Once again in formulating your response please consider the beginner aquarist who can at times be surrounded by an absolute flurry of information, and even if you do disagree with a fellow community members post please respect their opinion in a courteous manner.

If this post gets a good number of responses with solid information perhaps we can even get it stickied or moved to an archive area as a resource for future visitors.

Thank you all in advance for any information provided, and happy listing!

[penna32]

well i don't have a top ten, but i do have a few

1. red temple
2. java fern (grows in my 10 .. where i dont dose anything, but doesnt grow in my 20, where i dose fertz .. hmm ?)

[Jay]

Hmmmm let's see

Plant one:
Looking under low light for each of 50 variables you listed
Looking under NO3 dosing and the 50 variables
Looking under Substrate and the 50 variables plus NO3

ok then 50 X 50 = 2500 x 50 = 125,000 combinations for plant one X 10 plants = how many million variables and or opinions?

I think I'm going to let this one pass Whatever happened to Jay?

These two both have good books available dealing with the biology of plants and planted tanks. I do not always agree with all of what they say (thats why they make vanilla and Chocolate), But they are well informed and an interesting and useful read.

Karen Randall
Diana Walstad

You might also want to visit the Danish, Tropica Web site for identification and basic information.
www.tropica.dk/

Regards,
Jay

[P-Daddy]

Bah Jay, those were only suggestions, you don't need to consider each and every variable , part of the post was for fun, anyways I do appreciate the thought given to the post and the thorough, if open ended answer.

Also thanks by the way for getting me up and running with my plants, which with the exception of my moneywort are all doing quite well under my rather low-tech setup.

[branfrog]

Hey p-daddy,

I'm pretty much still a noob in the world of planted aquariums and this fourm is an invaluable resource to 'getting things right' the first time!

I have had my new planted aquarium for about 3 months now including the cycling period. I have a 20 gal, 3.25 watts per gallon, pressurized commercial co2, an assortment of ferts, and literally just (yesterday) pinned down my fert routiene, (i hope)...

That being said, prior to say, 2 weeks ago, my tanks parameters were all over the place for a period of 2.5 months: no co2 injection, too much light, minimal nitrates, minimal phosphates, minimal hardness. What i had going for me was a flourite substrate, the addition of organic carbon (Excel), potassium (fish flakes and Flourish potassium) and water changes.

During my tank noobyness and even while the tank was still undergoing a fishless cycle I added the following plants that absolutely thrived! in descending order #1 being best:

1) Water sprite (Ceratoperis thalictroides) grew to 3 times its original size, I need to trim it regualrly, awesome background and oxygen producer.
2) Narrow Leaf Chain sword (Echinodorus tennellus) spawned 7 new plants in the first month.
3) Bacopa Monnieri, growth peaks above the water about every 2 weeks and must be trimmed.
4) Pearl grass, the good stems seem to grow an inch a week.
5) Red Wendtii (cryptocoryne Wendii)
6) Egeria Najas
7) Rotala
8) Ciliata (Cryptocoryne ciliata) still alive and healthy, just a little growth 1/3 bigger?
9) Ludwigia, still healthy looking but no new growth from what i can tell.

I have some microswords that didn't do so well, arguably still alive, but much smaller than when purchased. I also had Downoi (my wife called little cabbages) that completely died...but i put them in when i was treating for ICH so the salt may have killed it?

This is just my small experience in the few plants i choose, there are probably a bunch more good beginner plants, but my top five made me feel like I was doing something right, even though i wasn't.

[Jay]

This is just my small experience in the few plants i choose, there are probably a bunch more good beginner plants, but my top five made me feel like I was doing something right, even though i wasn't.

Yeah but you were focused on the plants, their needs, and what they were telling you.

Think about it!

Jay

[Kuli_Loach]

Got a mystery plant which I think is an amazon sword leaf that spawns new ones all the time.

[P-Daddy]

Haha yea I actually have 2 plants I bought which were tagged as Amazon Swords, but they appear slightly different from each other and one is much, much healthier than the other and sprouts new stuff all the time.