University Tank - Live plants, yeah or nay?

[clownfish]

As the title says, I'm debating whether or not to put live plants into my fish tank that will be accompanying me to university. It's a 33 gallon with a large surface area, I have an air stone in it and only 4 fish at the moment (1 pink gourami and 3 neon tetras) although my plan is to add more.

As a busy university student-to-be, I'm doubting I'll have extra time to care for live plants and may want something a little hardier (aka plastic!). Do the benefits of live plants outweigh my possible time restraints?

[TKOS]

Well I would suggest getting easy to care for live plants. The reason I say that is if you go away for periods of time, like a week or so, the plants will help to keep your tank more stable. Plus it helps keep algae down. You can always suppliment with some fake plants as well to give a more full look without the extra work. Plants like java fern really don't require too much extra effort and make the whole tank much better. Gouramis seem to like live plants a lot as well.

[Molino]

On my low light planted tank very little maintenance is required. The plants grow so slowly that I have yet to prune them and I do not add any type of fertilizer.

[wetmanNY]

At University, will your water be very alkaline? That may cause headaches if you are growing plants.

But in moderate water, where the pH naturally balances around 7.0, and with good modern lighting (like the compact fluorescents that can be ranged along your top glass), you should have lots of benefit from the easy plants. Besides the Java Fern that TKOS mentioned, Java Moss and Anubias are undemanding plants.

Go for it! Plants help make a real ecosystem that largely balances itself. Much more interesting.

[delmore]

You may want to try watersprite. You can either let it float, or plant it in ordinary gravel.

WIth floating plants, your tank is more "portable."

Plant lock up the nitrates, which is a good thing, most fish like the cover, and they look great!

[dethjam316]

i think my watersprite lasted 2 days before it was COMPLETELY devoured.

[GoLdFiSh_GrL]

i think u shud get plastic so that way yur fish wont nibble... and u don't hav 2 take care of them @ all ;)

[nvision]

go with ferns and anubias. trust me, when midterms and finals arrive, you WILL miss several routine of dosing and water changes. these african plants will be more resilient to these treatments. if you want, you can check out my retired tanks, which are mostly from my college years also.

[clownfish]

Thanks for the advice so far. I think I'll probably end up doing a mix of live and plastic. I'll look into the plant types you recommended. Any others that might add a little diversity? I think I'm going to get an Amazon Sword plant... they're really quite neat :cool: