Are you able to grown real plants in standard aquarium gravel? or do you need to add some other substrate to allow them to grow?
Real Plants in Standard Aquarium Gravel
- Thread starter MVandenberk
- Start date
My plants are in regular gravel right now and there doing fine... making sure they stay in the gravel at first was a pain but besides that.
in nutshell..no. you do not need to add a different substrate.
part of what happens depends on the plant.
some will feed from the water column. anacharis, wisteria, java moss, java fern, anubias. to name a few.
some are root feeders (swords to name one) and will feed from the substrate.
early on in the tank there is not much in the gravel for root feeders to feed on. but that changes as the tank matures.
in general it is a good idea to add fert tabs to the substrate for root feeders.
what plants do you have? how much light do you have? these are probably a bit more imprtant questions.
part of what happens depends on the plant.
some will feed from the water column. anacharis, wisteria, java moss, java fern, anubias. to name a few.
some are root feeders (swords to name one) and will feed from the substrate.
early on in the tank there is not much in the gravel for root feeders to feed on. but that changes as the tank matures.
in general it is a good idea to add fert tabs to the substrate for root feeders.
what plants do you have? how much light do you have? these are probably a bit more imprtant questions.
Right now I don't have any live plants. I am considering replacing my fake ones with live ones and was curious if I needed any prep work before hand.
Lighting is a double 48" with Standard Lights that came with it (not sure on specifics) for a 90 gallon.
java fern and java moss grow easily.. they don't need a lot of light and they do well in typical faucet water. they're good looking plants in my opinion as well.. the moss will cover lots of objects and the fern will reproduce very quickly.
flourescent light isn't very good for plants unless you have a lot of it. I've found out incandescent can be more efficient for plants in an aquarium even if they don't produce the same lumens per watt that flourescent does (they seem to produce more UV per watt than flourescent). 4W per gallon is easy with an incandescent and most plants will flourish with that much incandescent light.
flourescent light isn't very good for plants unless you have a lot of it. I've found out incandescent can be more efficient for plants in an aquarium even if they don't produce the same lumens per watt that flourescent does (they seem to produce more UV per watt than flourescent). 4W per gallon is easy with an incandescent and most plants will flourish with that much incandescent light.
i have reg gravel and my plants also grow great. if your going to go with plants with roots go with 2-3 inch thick gravel.
if youre going to upgrade your lighting you should have at least 3 wpg. that way, you'll have a much larger selection of plants to choose from. get bulbs that are 5000k and higher and most plants will do fine. you may want to add co2 ferts as a way of algae control and your plants would really appreciate it too.
P.S most plants will do fine in regular gravel except for swords and other root feeders
P.S most plants will do fine in regular gravel except for swords and other root feeders
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