Do Tropical Fish Benefit From Live Plants

hi everyone.. when starting up a new aquarium does putting live plants in benefit the fish or will artificial ones  be ok.
i am thinking of stocking with mainly tetras, guppys, mollys etc .i have a 64 litre tank and over the next week will start stocking with 6 fish per week up to a max of 30 fish..  any advice would be welcome , thanks

Plants do benefit fish considerably, but to grow them you need to give them a fair chance. I now have 10 densely planted tanks in which the plants are thriving with minimum effort. I only have "ordinary" fluorescent lighting and no CO2 injection, so don't believe those who insist you must have enhanced lighting and extra CO2 to grow plants successfully. What plants need first and foremost is a decent substrate. Again, no need to buy ridiculously overpriced substrate additives. Mine is very simple, an inch of garden soil on the bottom, topped off by another inch of sand or gravel. Don't be afraid of soil. It stays under the top layer and won't make your tank or water dirty. I've found plants really thrive in this. However, it's best to restrict yourself to "easy" plants. Those which I've found to do best are Hygrophila polysperma and H. difformis, Rotala rotundifolia, Sagittaria subulata (doing much better than Vallisneria) with Echinodorus tenellus as a dwarf plant for the foreground. Cryptocoryne, and Java Fern or Anubias attached to bogwood, are OK, but they grow pretty slowly so I doubt if they are very useful in terms of improving water quality.
If you just put an inch or two of sand or gravel in the bottom of your tank and stick your plants into it then you are greatly reducing your chance of success. In nature, such substrates are invariably devoid of plants and one can hardly expect plants to succeed in such unsuitable conditions.
I can't do better than the following quotes from Diana Walstad's "Ecology of the planted aquarium".

"Essential to my natural aquarium is moderate lighting, a substrate enriched with ordinary soil, and well-adapted plants.

Hobbyists can protect fish from toxins by hard work, e.g., frequent water changes, gravel vacuuming, and enhanced filtration. However, given a chance, plants can purify the water naturally and effortlessly for the aquarium hobbyist. In my opinion, the ability of plants to purify aquarium water and protect fish has been woefully underestimated.

Using soil in aquariums is a strong ideological barrier for many aquarium hobbyists. Here, I mean soils that ordinary gardeners grow plants in— garden soil (i.e., topsoil) or potting soil.

Tanks with a soil layer and healthy plants will remove ammonia naturally, so bio-filters are unnecessary and possibly counter-productive.

Artificial fertilization with CO2, trace elements, and macronutrients is unnecessary if the tank contains a fertile substrate, the fish are fed well, and nutrients are not removed by over-zealous tank cleaning."

I suggest one must decide from the beginning whether to have a planted aquarium or not. I suspect most problems occur where people don't consider the requirements of the plants before they decide how to set up their tank, then try to grow them as an "added extra".

Richard, would you recommend frogbit over Salvinia and water lettuce?
I had some Salvinia in my tanks for about three years then it nearly all died last summer. I did manage to save some thanks to Natalia's advice, it seemed to be coming back well then it died completely in the autumn. The duck weed also died off at the same time. I was removing dead brown plants from the tank every day where a couple of years ago I was putting handfuls of lush green plants in the compost every month.
I tried some water lettuce, bought that in October, and it just dwindled to nothing over about a month. Either some of my fish have suddenly developed a taste for floating plants or I'm doing something wrong.

It can be a steep learning curve! Very few shops or tank/filter instructions will mention cycling, for example - that's the name for the process of growing bacteria in the filter. And stocking can seem more like an art than a science. Will this fish be OK in that tank, will these two fish get on, do these fish need to be in a shoal or will they be OK as a single specimen, do these fish need hard or soft water, and so on. Then, as you have found, there is the question of plants. Some people are so keen on plants that fish are secondary.

Here are a couple of links explaining the two processes of cycling (growing bacteria in the filter)
with fish
fishless, that is before buying any fish

There is a fish database on here, under fish profiles in the top menu. At the bottom of each individual profile is the community creator. Fill in details about the tank then add fish to the virtual tank. It'll flag up any warnings about the fish you choose. You have to register separately from the forum if you want to save your fish list.
For fish that aren't in the database here look at seriously fish

Don't believe what any shop worker says about fish, and what will go in your tank. Too many of them will say anything to make a sale. Go and look at all your local shops but research before you buy. If the fish's name doesn't come up with a match ask them for the latin name, which should be on the invoice from the wholesaler.


There is a lot to learn at the beginning, but I promise you it does get easier.

Natalia suggested that when my Salvinia started going brown last summer it was because of the heatwave, and condensation dripping onto the leaves combined with the heat. I left the lid flaps open during the day and the die off stopped until much later when it started dying again.
My largest tank (125 litres) does have quite a strong flow, it kept the Salvinia down at one end. I had the java fern at the filter end and silk plants under the Salvinia. When it reached the bracer bar across the middle, I used to throw some in the compost bin or it would have taken over. The Salvinia turned brown when it died, the duckweed went white.

The water lettuce just seemed to vanish into thin air. I never saw any dead leaves, they just disappeared. I did wonder if some of my fish ate that plant.



I used to have hornwort in my 60 litre tank, I wrapped it round the decor and let the stems drift. The tank sprung a leak a couple of years ago; I had to move the fish into the quarantine tank till I got a replacement tank and lost the hornwort then as there is not light on the QT. I might give it another go.

Your low pH won't be helping. At below 6.5, most bacteria don't function properly, but it is possible to grow enough viable ones to eventually keep your ammonia & nitrite under control. The process is very similar to the way medicine resistant bugs grow - the majority are affected by the low pH (or meds) but a few will be able to cope and they will survive to mulitiply and produce more bacteria capable of living in less than perfect conditions.

The alternative is to raise your pH. How hard is your water? If it is very soft, you can increase both hardness and pH slightly by using something made from calcium carbonate in your tank - limestone rocks, pieces of coral, crushed coral in the filter, possibly even shells. Calcium carbonate dissolves slowly, increasing both GH and KH over time. The other thing you could try is using remineralisation salts of the type used with RO water (Tropic Marin freshwater remin salts or Kent RO right). With this route you would need pH and GH testers until you learned how much to add with each water change.

Ooooh getting a bit close there Colin. At least you didn't say teenagers in Middlesbrough 

hi, thanks for advice,i have a 30l tank with 2 goldfish in and ph 6.5 isn but my tropical tanks (60l) and ph is 6 (light yellow on my ph chart scale)so maybe i have something in my tank that is making it low, any ideas..i have heard of crushed coral,so what would i have to do with it if i got some as i would like to raise it to at least 6.5. thanks    ps  i tested mains water that had been left in a bucket for 24 hours and it was 6.5 ish..

hi, im not sure what the platys are so will have to wait and watch, bit like being a teenagers dad!!   

 

Platy naughty bits:

Things like bogwood can lower pH, especially if you have low carbonate hardness (which is likely given your tap water pH). Carbonate hardness, ie KH, buffers water against pH changes and if there isn't much of it, the tannins that leach out of wood can drop the pH quite a bit.


Something else you said does worry me

i have a 30l tank with 2 goldfish in

If they are fancy goldfish, ie fish with double tail fins, they need 70 litres for the first then 40 litres for each additional one, so your two goldfish need a 110 litre tank at the smallest. If they are commons or comets (single tail fin) they need bigger tanks again or a pond. When fish are kept in a tank that's too small they get stunted which leads t deformities and other health issues.