As a beginner, I planted a dwarf lily bulb and a red tiger lotus bulb on each side of my tank. What an amazing experience! I trained the red tiger lotus to grow low, after it took over the top of the water with 10-20 lilies. When the dwarf lily shot up a lily to the top, I quickly cut it and the plant stopped growing for a week or two. Now the dwarf lily pearls every day and grows low after cutting 1 lily! The tank is "high tech"/"low cost" - Hygger 24/7 plant light, fertilizers (Easy Iron and Easy Green) and $100 CO2 tank that uses mixing baking soda and citric acid, on a timer. The other plants in the tank are anubias (grows a leaf per week), red cambomba (grows like a weed), and ludwigia super red - the only thing that hasn't gone crazy in the tank is the ludwigia, it just grows tons of roots out of every part of the stems. It may be because of the sand substrate.
As a beginner it’s definitely hard. I have a low tech tank with no CO2 and medium lighting but my S Repens and Blyxa have grown pretty well…guess it depends on water conditions also. I use iron tabs in my substrate and don’t fertilize every week. Great video as always Blake 👍
There is a plant that is being sold as aquatic but is plain green with no white on it: justicia shimperi. It's apparently a marsh plant that no one seems to have managed to grow submersed for longer than 2 months. There isn't much info on this plant online.
Aluminum plant, Purple waffle, Pongol, Dragon flame and Bella palms, are all Hall of Fame Terrible Aquarium plants, found in nearly EVERY Pet store..........Good call out Blake :)
I'm having a weird issue with my purple waffle wanting to grow fully submerged when I put in the pot hanger above my tank it wilts away into mushy mess
I think what Blake wanted to say was anubias is not a good beginner plant because you cannot evaluate your water quality or plant keeping skill from anubias as they always react slowly to the changes in water quality and nutrients. So, I guess both of you are right.
@@teddnaing6851 You can easily evaluate your water quality. Also, most people looking to get into live plants are NOT looking to evaluate their plant keeping skills.
Really, I have 4 small tanks and have played it hit or miss, got dirt, got rocks, got nice light, then got various plants, I don't know their names, some lived and some died and some go crazy and do the take over. I got some algae eating fish and they help clean the tanks that need it. There's something so meditative about relaxing and watching my fish-buds.
What you said is absolutely correct. specially there is a hype about anubias plants as beginner plant but I dont like it as it shows no response in growth over months.
You have no idea how much I thank you for this video. I’ve only just started my very first tank a few weeks ago and yes those plants included most of the cheaper plants you’ve mentioned. After being told by one employee ‘these are all cuttings, you can’t grow cuttings’ then getting told by two other employees somewhere else that that wasn’t true and there are plenty of plants that will grow. They all essentially agreed that ‘yes you can but some are harder to grow’ and ‘as long as they have roots they’ll be fine’ so I bought a dozen bunches which included aluminium, purples, reds and soft leaves since they all had roots they would be fine. It’s been a few weeks now and most of them are rotting or have lost all their leaves and are just an ugly stick. I didn’t understand what I was doing wrong. Now I know.
I have rushes, half in and out is the best option to keep them a live. I have lucky bamboo. Same thing half in and out. Aluminium plants are fine with just roots in. Never killed a anubias, but my mother has. I planted up a huge bonsai tree with it for her for her tank and she killed it some how. I kill crypts and java fern. Red plants love me! Cuba is a great low tech carpeting plant.
Great video...and i see why those plants are better avoided for beginners unless they are fully aware of the holistic environment of their individual aquariums. Like i am not prepared to do the extra work of adding iron supplement for red leaf plants or plants that need high lighting conditions. But if a beginner misses that point they will most probably have to face disappointment. Planning to do a covered aquarium with some floating plants for gouramis. Still feel there's a lot to learn. Thanks for the perspective on Anubias. Will keep that in mind .
I have cabomba and alternanthera reineckii mini and they're growing like crazy even tho i haven't even replaced the light. The light i have is just the default that came with the tank
If you can balance the flow and surface agitation, red root floater can be an amazing plant and very easy to grow. I’ve had great success in low tech tanks with just flourish and excel
ive had thm for a few months now, i bought a small cup of thm and now i have them in 5 of my tanks. they are really cool how the leaves will change color on the light they get.
@@TechMan1900 yes i forgot to mention that too! about a month ago my one tank filled up across the top and they started flowering, they are such a cool plant if you can figure how to grow them!!!
Thank you. The amount of non aquatic plants sold in shops is criminal. Also in the 80s many were actually wrapped up with lead to hold them in the substrate. Dunno if that's still done. On a side note I have water irises in a pond, It slowly escaped and is now happily 3ft deep but yes it pokes out the top. Great for an open top tank. I have transferred them to tanks after a little hydrogen peroxide bath..... I read somewhere that they are also the best filter plants. For in a hob etc or just generally. Val the same in my pond, 3 foot deep. I just gave it a haircut like its going in the army. I try to keep them in pots... but they escape.
@@dt4676 try them in pots if your fish are cichlids etc. Although the will likely destroy them anyway. You can glue (superglue gel is easiest) to a piece of wood, a tile, or a piece of terracotta. Get rid of the metal. And good luck. Gluing plants while they establish is an age old thing. even mosses. Don't give up, live plants are the best thing for nitrates and your fish. :) I have 4 box filters, well one is a sponge filter. I give it a squeeze about once a year or if it stops bubbling. IN a 2 foot. There is egg shells and activated carbon in there too. I have pretty much given up testing the water as it is always the same. That many box filters I don't need an air stone. There are 9 rainbows and 13 white clouds and one betta. The tank has been like that for 18 months. Gotta get my 3foot by 18 by 18 going but.... I am lazy.
Thank you sometimes it's as important to know what not to do. Delicate swispy Rotalas with creamy pink tops are not for beginners. Thanks this was very helpful.
Wow. so glad i have found this video just after planting aluminum purple waffle purple temple. Shocking now i'm going to proper aquatic plant & fish store.
Does it also left an empty spot in your heart ? I mean when it happened to me, it does. Watching something that you thought was happy..... and then it just died.
I have always been able to grow red root floaters to fill the surface of my tanks and throw out excess by the bucketful but I rarely ever get them to turn proper red. So yeah, I think red root floaters can work as beginner plants but people should not expect them to turn (or stay) red.
Totally agreed on your take of Anubias.. it's a good easy plant but not a good beginner plant.. 😄 Easy carpeting plant would be Pearlweed great plant for tanks especially where the fish are egg scattering. The eggs are well protected and have higher chances of babies surviving
I know when I first started with plants the first year I probably lost a good $1k. But I’ve learned what I’ve liked now and it’s low tech plants don’t like all the maintenance.
Im actually glad i ran across this video.. however, i did already purchase a bamboo plant and i believe a java moss ball. I partially submerged the bamboo behind my hanging filter. The moss ball i dropped in the bottom of the tank. My tank is in front of a window with the blinds down.. so not direct sunlight. Its my first time with live aquarium plants and in my 20 gal. Tank are 2 goldfish and a dojo. Im worried my bamboo and moss will die.. the moss was brown when it was sold to me and im worried its dead. The bamboo seems fine but it wasnt quite long enough to burry in the substrate. So the question is.. will my bamboo die like that and is my moss ball dead?
I've binned most of my aquarium people, I'm keeping you and father fish...I have a few more but I'm gonna fire em....another great video I'm hoping to do a planted tank real soon.👍
I am definitely still futzing about with plants rather than trying to make a scape or anything. Growth wise the most rewarding have been my crypt garden, Java ferns i attached to some rocks, and the huge tankbuster sword in my main tank. Anubias get so dirty!
Should be noted I also have a bit of an algae problem. Been taking care of it manually and just got a few shrimp for in it. 2 died while in quarantine, but the other 3 are doing really good in the tank now!
Great tips Blake - thanks! I put a thin leafed exotic lily recommended by my local last week at a cost of $49 and my angles are the whole thing in 48 hours. Ouch! I don’t even spent that much money taking my fiancé & myself out for dinner! 🤣(Yet, she’s still marrying me - for some reason!) 🤷🏼♂️
Wow i just bought 4 purple waffle plants and the guy in the store told me they can be grown under water 🤦🏾♂️ is it any possible way i can get them to grow fully submerged?
Dont be discouraged by a plant loss. If you have learned from it, than it's actually a win. Dont try to do a sub 10 gallon 40 liter tank as a high tech tank on your first go, the smaller the tank the harder to balance.
So, my first attempt at a planted tank went really badly. My anubias were always covered in algae and my java ferns would turn black and die. This with just a simply Aqueon Planted Clip On. But on a 11.75 inch cube with 2 inches of substrate I was blasting my slow growing low light plants. Round two, same problem but I figured it out. Lowered my light by around 60% (window screen replacement to filter the light) and added ferts once a week. Even my val. took off in lower light. (My snails are happier about the lower light too.) I probably could have gotten away with the regular non planted version of the light for my plants. Java fern, anubias, java moss and jungle val. I am begining to wonder if they would do just fine with ambient light, lol.
Great video! I’ve made so many of those mistakes🤣. Can you do some related videos such as “great plants that Cory’s won’t dig up” or “great plants to grow biofilms for algae grazers”? “Great plants for shrimplets and fry to hide?” That would be an excellent series!
I could have done with this video 6 months ago. Would have saved me a bunch of money :) Really frustrating as a beginner that some of these plants are sold at pet stores and aquariums, often without labels, so you have no idea what you're getting in to.
I don't understand why the experience is so different for everyone. I've tried so many stem plants that are "low tech", "easy", "unkillable" and "grows like weed", yet i still managed to kill it. And I tried all kind of fertilisers. I'm getting co2 next, that's the only thing I haven't tried.
Non-aquatic might actually be a good plant to get people interested in planted aquariums in general, if they can be talked into experimenting with a little aquaponics. Marginal plants do such a great job cleaning the water, are typically cheap and available, and lighting isn't as tricky. You can even keep the aquarium in front of a window to get natural light for the non-aquatic plants if you have a solid background that blocks light from the aquarium and if the plants are thick enough that they shade light that would otherwise go full strength into the water. Of course that same thing goes with rushes, grasses, and lucky bamboo. My reason for being on the fence about recommending anubias or any sort of slow growing plant to beginners is simply because they don't remove pollutants from the water very fast, and unless the budding aquarist has algae control figured out, slow growers can get covered with algae pretty quickly; That's what happened to my poor sweet nana petites, god rest their souls 😭 I'm sure I'll get some more eventually, but right now babying Bucephalandra in their place. If you get Marimo moss from a reputable dealer/grower, I don't see the issue. My problem with marimo has been the fact that it fits in with the above paragraph on slow growers. Despite it being an algae itself, it can get covered with more aggressive algaes and smothered until you get out of that algae farming phase. It naturally grows in very clean water though, so I assume it shouldn't need hardly any fertilizer, so that's a plus at least. Even though my anubias died, I have through some miracle been able to keep the marimo alive all this time; It is definitely some tough stuff. While red plants need a lot of light and co2, if they are allowed to grow close to the surface or even emersed, they can still obtain that without blasting your tank with photons and algae, so it can still be a teaching tool. Bearing in mind though, a lot of amphibious plants don't do well in lower humidity, and even the air just a fraction of an inch or cm above your tank (if it's open topped) will be the same humidity as the rest of the room, believe it or not. Needless to say, the whole "put a tray of water under your house plants to raise the humidity around the plant" idea is fake news. Also, I'm wondering what your beef with red root floaters is... You can get those things pretty red with just a couple household led daylight bulbs with the diffusors removed, and because they cover the surface, you don't get a lot of that light filtering through to the water, and of course floating plants in general work well at removing excess nutrients because they grow rapidly due to the easier access to co2.
If you have a cold water tank moss balls could be good. They are not tropical. I had some, got rid of them years ago and have made bunch of new ones from the bits of the moss that still pop up. They are growing in a jar.
@@BlakesAquatics you do know that marimo moss balls are in the cladophora algea familly right? The reason its illigal is because of the zebra mussels that are a common pest found in those moss balls that are exported and are vary invasive they clog up water systems as they can live without water fo a while.
@@BlakesAquatics my main point was the cladophora algea part maybe i just missunderstood but isint marimo moss balls just clodophora? Or is it the sell you another type then A.Linnaei? @4:25
I picked up a plant from a local aquarist, who called it an onion plant, and it looks like garlic grass, but the grass part is firmer than garlic grass, it has a small white bulb at the bottom, and the grass part is 24 inches tall. What is it? does it propagate well?
Enjoy them since you already bought them. In the meantime, learn how to make them work in your tank then your money wouldn't have been wasted. Each plant requires different conditions to thrive. For example, I started with lucky bamboo as a beginner. It worked great for me because they grew very fast and within a month or so, grew to be about 3 feet tall. Contrary to what's presented in this video, they were great low maintenance plants that really thrived in the aquarium environment. I even propagated mine from my tank and used the babies to seed another tank. So long as you learn these growing conditions, you'll be good.
My mom is a plant lover, while I like the aquatic plants. If I ordered and planted non aquatic plants in my aquarium, she'd probably laugh at my stupidity. She'd never let me live it down 😂
Aquatic snails won't eat healthy plants. They are detritivores, which means they eat dead and decaying matter. (waiting for someone to mention assassin snails)
What boges said, ramshorn, pond snails etc wont eat health plant matter except if there is no other food available. The more rigid the leaves the safer the option
I have a question. Like I know adding CO2 to dope plants encourages growth. With aquatic plants it would too, but is it just a booster? Like make it grow faster or necessary? If you have a tank that you have for years is it necessary? Like it looks cool but do I want my plants pearling or just growing at a slow rate? Some may need it to grow, so they can re scape every 6 months, but well I like a natural look and don't want that. TIA
@@BlakesAquatics it removed tannins from drift wood for me... like overnight. Good to know it add s carbon for the plants. I've never thought about that, or been told it or read it. Thanks.
Oops, just ordered the A. Reineckii mini lol. Guess we'll see. I'm not a beginner but returning to the hobby after 5-year hiatus. I had no problem bringing out huge bright reds in L. Ripens or Crips in previous setups, but we'll see about A.R. mini. Knock on wood wish me luck! P.s how do you feel about Rotala Indica?
love rotala indica, its a great one but definitely requires a fair bit of manicuring. If you ordered standard AR you should be able to train it to stay low to the ground with regular trimming
@@BlakesAquatics I ordered the AR mini but thanks for the tip. I also love the look of Rotala Indica and as fate would have it my LFS has some I want to get this weekend, must be a sign! Do I need to nitrate starve it to bring out the reds like Rotala Rotundifolia? I also want to learn how you grew that amazing Microsorum mini and java moss together in a solid mound on the Spiderwood. I have actually been trying to research it the last 30min lol. They are intermingled so densely, beautiful!
@@Ownuout only tip I have is to leave it alone and let mature take its course 🤣 any time ive tried to form it to get it to go in a certain place I end up just fighting it
I don't believe this! I bought a fully submerged purple waffle today at Petbarn, Australia. She said, the plant needs a high tank, because it needs to be fully submerged in water. She said, if the leaves stick out, they will die. And you are telling me, it's the other way round? Oh God. Should I take it back and complain?
@@BlakesAquatics I will tell them off! I go there quite a lot, they shouldn't give people the wrong information! I might try another shop on Botany road, Sydney. Aquaristic, it's just a bit of a drive. Thanks anyhow for all your videos! I did lift up the Purple Waffle last night, just checked it, and it's doing quite well, the leaves look strong.
@@sissi8610 the reason why they commonly are sold is because they dont die overnight when submerged. It may take 1, 3, 6 months but eventually it will unfortunately. Have heard good things about aquaristic
My marimo moss ball resulted in lots of green filament algae all over my tank. I took it out 2 weeks ago and removed all the algae strands I could find and I'm STILL finding more. Do you have any idea why?
@@amandah2866 Old comment, but for anyone reading this, marimo is a filamentous green macro algae, and is called "moss" because it's rather tough wool-like texture makes it seem more like a moss than an algae. Because the filaments are rather tenacious, they don't disintegrate when the are routinely bashed against the shore by waves; They just get rolled into balls by the waves, hence why they are sold as balls. You can actually pull the marimo out of the ball form and flatten it out to make a carpet from it. These things grow in very clear low nutrient waters, and are typically slow growing. In fact, if you have even a little bit of an algae issue in your tank, the slow growing marimo will likely actually get covered with a more vigorous mat algae that will suffocate and kill it. If you've got a green filamentous algae, but it's fairly soft, spreads out and grows filaments all over the tank, and at a rapid pace, you probably got ripped off.
I always hear lucky bambu cant grow under water.. ive had numberous of them atleast 9-12" under water for months and they have done nothing but grow and grow. No melting. Had ONE plant get net leaf but it came back and they are shooting roots everywhere and super green.
