Advice for Plants for 65g and 20g Long

[Stara'lfur]

Hello! I'd appreciate some advice on plants for my tanks.

My 20G long so far has only been a quarantine tank and has fake plants. NICREW Deluxe LED Aquarium Light, Full Spectrum Fish Tank Light for Planted Tanks, 30 to 36-inch, 28-Watt, 1800 LM, 7500K Light.

I'd love to get something easy and beautiful growing. Maybe just a bunch of grass. Don't have substrate yet but debating on black sand or black flourite. Will prob go with flourite unless I wanna get cories. I just want it to be an easy plant, I think with my light it will be high light correct? I'd be down to dose excel for a while but eventually i'd like to taper that off, keep it easy, but i'd love to get the whole substrate covered in something. So interested in any ideas for easy plants as well as stocking Prob gonna do a couple small schools of nano fishies.

My 65G, has a 24/7 finnex planted light.

So the tank is pretty low light and it's all anubias at the moment. Low tech, sometimes I add excel to help with the algae but so far over the past 3 years the algae ALWAYS comes back especially the brown. I hear it might be due to silicates in my water. Also I acquired the tank second hand and it had already been running for a few years. New fish by now though. Anyway I have tons of anubias but I'd looove to get a carpet of something going, not sure if it's possible. I tried dwarf sags and they grew for a bit but never spread and eventually died off. Also any advice on stopping the brown algae? I'm debating getting some ottos at this point.

 

[the loach]

Your new 20 G will do better with plants, your 65 G is a high tank with a less powerful led too. You mean a brown coating? Those are diatoms, these thrive in low light conditions but are harmless, and many algae eating fish and snails love them.
You can probably do medium light plants just fine with your 7500 K light (sorry it's too late for me to do the actual math) you don't have to stick to low light plants. Are you going to order plants or source them locally? In any case if you want to try carpet plants.. don't get floating plants.

 

[fishorama]

You can probably grow lots of low-medium light plants. I don't have LEDs yet but can grow many plants. Flourite black sand is like dust & very hard to clean, I hated it. I have "chain swords" (laeliopsis Novo-z?) in a 110g but it's not a carpet, yet? Glosso might work. True carpets are hard. I love cryptocorynes in all their many forms & colors!

 

[the loach]

By all means don't get the dust sand...
You can try Cryptocoryne parva as carpet plant. It's easy, but it also grows very slowly...

 

[Stara'lfur]

By all means don't get the dust sand...
You can try Cryptocoryne parva as carpet plant. It's easy, but it also grows very slowly...

Interesting on the parva, would it work in my 65g with low light? I Could just buy a ton I guess and cover the bottom

 

[the loach]

Well it could be estimated, do you have the specifications of that light, and how tall is the tank?

 

[NoodleCats]

Id suggest crypts for both tanks, and anacharis both easy plants for any light

 

[fishorama]

Well, crypt parva...I used to suggest it but after my failed attempt in 3 different ferts & substrate combos...lets just say I lost half of the 30+ plants I started with. But my club friend was very impressed by my "success with it, it's very difficult" meh. I think tanker called it when she said (maybe more than once) "parva, you've got to be kidding!", lol, when I said it might be a good ground cover. I wonder what plant I thought was parva that did pretty well...way back in the day? Or maybe it was hard water or something...

 

[the loach]

Really? Interesting. I've never kept or found parva Rachel O'Leary recommended it:

 

[fishorama]

I think Rachel lives in PA & likely has harder water than I have had lately, we did in DE. That may be where I had it. tanker lives sort of near me now. The hard water is just a guess, it could be something else. But really, really slow growing here. Still, a really cute plant!