Dumb question about plants from Petco (or LFS)

[rwilliams254]

If they come in the little buckets...you take them out of the buckets and plant them right? I have a friend who doesn't do this, he leaves in the buckets and plants the buckets. He said it works well for him.

[247Plants]

Its best to take the plastic pot off and remove as much rockwool as possible so that the roots of the plants have a place to expand. Its like keeping a terrestrial plant in a pot. eventually its going to grow a rootball and eventually stunt in growth. Not many pots found in nature.

[rwilliams254]

That's what I told him too... C'est la vie. I don't have a potted tank...but it seemed logical to me.

(I used to have a couple of plants years ago in tanks long past gone...but I hated the snails that came with them).

[Aries]

Another reason to remove the pots and rockwool is that the rockwool is made to keep nutrients for the plant for long periods of time.

While it may work for his setup, it can cause failure in other systems by throwing extra nutrients in the aquarium.

Aries