How to Decorate Your Fish Tank with Live Plants
Not only do live plants make the tank look better, but they also make it healthier for your fish. It is very important to prepare the ground properly if you want to put live plants in your fish tank.
Putting live plants in your fish tank
- Put the plants in the fish tank before you add the fish.
- Add a layer of fertilizer material to the bottom of the tank so that the plants can grow roots on it.
- Put a layer of fine soil or sand on top of the ground to let the roots get through.
- Cover the soil with a lid or plate,, and then add about a quarter of an inch of water to the tank. To avoid problems, make sure the water is not too hot or too cold.
- Carefully take the plants out of their pots and put them in the tank. Put the tall plants in the back and the short ones in the front, making sure that the roots of each are fully buried in the ground. Do not put them too close to the heater or filter.
- Put everything in the tank, and let the warmer and filter work for at least a month before adding any fish. According to Aquacadabra’s fishkeeping book, this gives the bugs time to level off.
What kinds of plants do you think will do best in your fish tank?
What are the best ways to choose live plants for your fish tank that will look good and cause you the least amount of trouble now that you know how to set it up? You can pick plants from three different groups: the center, background, and mid-ground of the picture. When you set up the tank, you will need to think about how much light each type needs.
Plants in the foreground should stay low and cover the tank’s bottom, not ones that grow tall and wide. These are plants like Water Wisteria, Java Moss, and Willow Moss that help clean the water and keep it healthy.
It’s almost impossible to kill Java moss because it grows so fast. It works best to connect it to something, like a rock, so it doesn’t float to the top. It grows quickly and does well in most places. It’s a great plant for decoration because it grows over the tank floor and hides the base.
For a medium level of plants with more color and interest, choose plants that rise off the bottom of the tank but are not too high. For example, Amazon Sword and Java Fern are examples of plants that look like grass and grow up off the bottom of the tank.
Plant Amazon swords in the middle of the tank. They grow tall and have leaves that look like swords. It’s easy to hide things like pipes and other gear that you don’t want people to see with them in the background. Java Fern is also a great plant to put in the middle of the tank to hide parts or keep them safe. It has thick, striped leaves that grow in groups.
Trees or plants with lots of leaves that grow tall should be used for the background. They will cover the back of the tank up to the water line. This is where the largest plants go.
Anubias Nana, with its pretty curved stems and round leaves; Pygmy Chain Sword, which looks like grass; Pogostemon helferi, with its pretty zigzag leaves; and Dwarf Sagittaria, which likes to root in stone or wood and grow out from there, are some other plants that look great in fish tanks.
As long as you follow a fish-keeping guide, using live plants to decorate your fish tank can actually make it a better place for your fish to live. The plants can clean the water, sometimes give the fish food, and make locations where they are likely to breed. By putting the plants in the right places in the tank, they will make a beautiful living scenery and hide some of the less appealing parts, like the pipes or filters, making the tank look better.
