Beginners Guide to Aquatic Plants: How to Keep Plants in Your Fish Tank

You know, one of the things I really love about the aquatics hobby is keeping plants. Have you ever thought about keeping plants? Maybe you've kept plants before and they all died and you weren't that successful. Or maybe you're keeping plants now, but you want a few extra tips on how to keep them as healthy as possible. Well, in this video, we're going to talk about how to take care of plants. We're going to make it simple. So stay tuned. Hello everyone. This is Jason from Primetime Aquatics. And yes, today we're going to be talking about how to keep plants and we're going to keep it simple. So if you're a beginner, this is the place for you. If you want to start getting into live plants, you think it might add something extra to your fish tanks. We're going to talk about how to do that successfully. So thing number one, choose your plants wisely. We've done a video on our top five easiest plants to grow for beginners. I will put a card in the upper right-hand corner over here. So you can take a look at that video after this one, but to kind of summarize that video, there are certain plants that we really love in our fish room. Things like crypts. Crypts are really easy to grow. They come in all different sizes. The leaf structure can be different. They're relatively low light plants. Another plant that we really like is Anubias. Anubias is a great plant because it comes in all different sizes and shapes and leaf structures to Anubias nanopetite, where it stays really, really tiny all the way up to the larger Anubias, which get pretty big. But in either case, they're relatively low light plants and it doesn't take a lot of high-tech equipment to get them to grow. We also like our Java Fern. Java Fern is another low light plant that's easy to grow. Java Moss is easy to grow. We also really like Jungle Val. For whatever reason, in our fish room, Jungle Val grows really, really well for us. It spreads throughout almost all the tanks that we have. We like it a lot. Now those are just some of the easy to grow plants. Again, in our video where we talked about the top five beginner plants, we share some other ones as well. But the point is, start with plants that are easy to grow, that require low light, that don't require CO2, and that's going to go a long way in helping you be successful in your plant keeping. So why buy live plants? After all, fake plants are so easy. You go to the store, you buy them, you throw them in a tank, you leave them alone, you don't have to worry about it. But live plants provide a lot of benefits to our ecosystems. Thing number one, they provide surface area for beneficial bacteria to grow that will help in the nitrogen cycle. Thing number two, fish tend to interact with live plants in a more realistic fashion than they do with fake plants. The other thing that live plants do is they will produce oxygen in a fish tank while the lights are on. They will also help control nitrogen levels. And so live plants will consume ammonia. They will consume nitrates as well. And so that is certainly something that's very, very important in an aquarium when we're trying to manage the amount of toxic materials that our fish produce. Live plants help balance our nitrogen. Okay, so we know a couple of important things already. Thing number one, get easy plants. Start with plants that are easy to grow, that don't require a lot of high-tech equipment. Thing number two is they provide a lot of benefits for us. So the live plants that we've already mentioned both in the beginning of this video and the ones that we talked about in the video I referenced earlier, top five easiest plants to grow. The nice thing is in terms of water parameters, they're pretty hardy. So for instance, for us, we leave our lights on about nine hours a day and we actually split it up into roughly four, four and a half hours, two times a day. And our plants do great with that kind of a schedule. Our lights are pretty much all Fenix Stingray. They're not super high-tech. They're not necessarily designed to make plants grow awesome, but they are more than sufficient for the plants that I've already mentioned. We've actually done a video on why we really like Stingrays and the Fenix brand. I will put that card in the upper right-hand corner as well as put that video in the description below in case you want more information on these lights. Again, they do a great job. We even have tanks where we just have standard fluorescent lights, the old school lights that come in a kit with a fish tank. And the plants that we're dealing with here and the ones that we're talking about here grow just fine. So lighting is not a huge issue. We don't have to spend a lot of money on lights with the plants. Second thing, water parameters. For us, we keep up most of our tanks somewhere in the mid seventies to around 80 or so. And in that range, you could probably go as low as 70, maybe slightly above 80, but not too much. And all of the beginner plants that we've talked about so far, they grow just fine. Our water hardness is a little bit on the hard side. Our TDS total dissolved solids is pretty close to around 170 or 180. We've had no problems with that. And the plants that we're talking about, they'll do pretty good in a wide range of water hardness parameters. The other thing is pH. The plants that we've talked about so far will typically grow right around a neutral pH into the sixes as high as in our case, in our fish room, we've got a pH of around eight to 8.2. And all the plants we've talked about so far grow just fine at that pH. Now you may be thinking that's all great, but you've heard a lot of rumors that plants can be hard to deal with. And one of those things is substrate. What type of substrate do you need? Some of you may have heard, oh, you have to have gravel of a certain size. Sand won't work. And then maybe you've heard, well, sand is the only way to go because gravel, the plants just can't root. The truth is for easy beginner plants, the substrate really isn't that important. We grow our plants both in gravel and in sand and have no problems in either situation. Our sand is, some of our sand is pool filter sand that is relatively fine grain. We have Nat Geo sand with slightly larger grain, and then we've got gravel. And in all cases, our plants are growing just fine. Now, maybe you wouldn't want to go with really big size gravel where the roots really do have a hard time growing and the gravel itself is relatively heavy. But for us, the standard gravel that you buy at the store, sand that you buy at the store, we've had no issues growing our plants in either of those substrates. For beginner plants, you really don't have to worry about CO2. When you get into more advanced plants, maybe, but for all the plants that we've mentioned here and all the plants we have in our fish room, we have no CO2 running and all of our plants are doing just fine. All right, so now let's talk a little bit about how we care for our plants. And you're going to find out that it really isn't that difficult. So thing number one, when it comes to water changes, plants, one of the benefits, they often help us reduce the amount of water we have to change in an aquarium on a weekly basis. And in some cases, you don't have to do your weekly water changes anymore. Sometimes we can push those off an additional week. What we prefer to do, if we were originally changing water, let's say 25% a week, and now we get our plants and our plants are keeping the nitrates down. And now we find we only have to do 25% every other week. We tend to do 10% water changes every week. A couple of reasons for that. Large water changes are probably more stressful to your fish than small water changes in many cases. Thing number two is you'll see sometimes your plants really respond well to small water changes because your water changes may introduce new minerals into the tank. The bottom line is when it comes to water changes, it's really going to depend on the amount of nitrates that are in your tank, keeping in mind that plants will actually utilize the nitrates. But if it's starting to elevate past that 20 to 30 parts per million range, you're probably going to want to do a water change to keep it at around 20 parts per million or less. So let's talk about how we care for plants. The beginner plants are really easy to care for. All plants need a source of nutrients. Some of those nutrients are going to come from fish waste that settles in the substrate. One of the things that we do when we're doing our water changes in tanks that have plants, we don't gravel vac. So all that stuff that sinks to the bottom is nutrients for plants that helps them really grow. And I think that's one of the reasons why we've had such good luck with the plants that we've grown in our fish room. However, often the nutrients that are in the substrate may not be enough. And so there's a couple of things that you may want to add. And it's relatively simple to do. Thing number one is this. This is the Aquarium Co-op Easy Green Fertilizer. It's a liquid fertilizer. This fertilizer is really great for those plants that feed from the water column. In other words, the plants that generally don't root very deeply in the substrate. So examples might be things like Anubias. If you're tying it to wood or kind of placing it in between rocks, the roots generally don't grow very deep into the substrate. Java Fern, if you're tying that to wood. Java Moss might be another really good option that would utilize this stuff here, the Easy Green. The nice thing about this Easy Green plant fertilizer is it comes with a pump. And the directions are super simple. You just take one of these, squirt one pump full for every 10 gallons, and you'll kind of dial it in. If you don't have very many plants in the tank, maybe you only have a half a squirt. As your plants really start to grow, you might need slightly more. But this stuff, super easy to use. I find it much more cost effective than the other brands that are out there. And it comes from a company that ships pretty quick and has excellent customer service. So definitely worth a try. The other aspect is the fertilizers that we put in the substrate. And those are root tabs. And we really like the Easy Root Tabs, again, from Aquarium Co-op. We'll place those in tanks every maybe a couple times a year or three times a year. Place those strategically around the tank, usually a couple inches, a few inches away from wherever the plant is planted. Plants that really like that in our experience are things like Crips and Jungle Val. And those plants that have a lot of roots, sword plants are another one where they're taking up a lot of their nutrients from the substrate. And so those root tabs will go a long way in making sure that your plants are healthy. So caring for beginner plants is a pretty easy process. The cool thing is right now we have a coupon code PRIMETIME10. You go to aquariumcoop.com. As you place your order, you're checking out, you put that code in the coupon code box, you'll get 10% off your order. I will put a link to aquariumcoop.com in the description below for you to check out. All right, everyone, plants are awesome. It's a great way to keep your tanks looking good, keep your fish healthier, keep your water parameters in check. Hopefully you found this useful. If you did, share, subscribe, check out some of those other videos in the description, and we'll see you soon.