Centerpiece Plant for 15 gallon

DGalt

DGalt

AC Members
Jun 1, 2008
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Connecticut
So I'm doing a semi-large rescape of my 15 gallon planted and I have all the plants planned out except one.

I need a centerpiece plant, so keep that in mind.

The plan is this (floor plan picture below):
In the center, about 1/3 way back (4-5 inches from front of glass) there will be this cave thing that I'm constructing out of driftwood, leaving about 3-4 inches on either side of it. I'm going to cover this with substrate and plant a line of anubias petite along the front/top of the cover. The back left and right corners will have a bunch of dwarf sag and then the rest of the ground will be dwarf hairgrass.

I need a plant, though, to go behind the anubias. The center is going to be kind of like a hill or mound or whatever with the anubias at its summit. I haven't decided if I'm going to have a plateau there (doubtful) or have it slope down to the back of the glass. But I would like some type of broad plant for there. I want thinking a large crypt.

Something like this would be ideal:
ech%20ru.jpg


(that's an Echinodorus Rubin, type of sword), but I think a sword plant would end up being too big for a tank this size.


Floor Plan (not to scale, so ignore relative dimensions):
Layout.png


Thanks for any suggestions :D
 
Try a cryptocoryne affinis. It's a beauty, growing about a foot and a half tall with big leaves that are green on top and red underneath.
 
Somethingi s definitely needed to shade the anubias petite. It prefers to be out of the direct light (unless it's low light). C. Wendtii normally likes shade as well. If you have access to the Red Rubin, try that, and just keep it trimmed. Unless you have tons and tons of light, it won't grow enormous all that quickly, IME.
 
I really like C. pontederiifolia. A C. wendtii 'Tropica' could be cool, although they are a little bit shorter. I also like wendtii 'Green Gecko' a lot.
 
I have to say that Red Rubin in the pic is deceiving because the ones I have take up a lot of area only new leaves tend to grow upward. I personally like the Microsorum pteropus v. 'red' aka Java 'red', but crypts are cool too.
 
thrak76 said:
Somethingi s definitely needed to shade the anubias petite. It prefers to be out of the direct light (unless it's low light). C. Wendtii normally likes shade as well. If you have access to the Red Rubin, try that, and just keep it trimmed. Unless you have tons and tons of light, it won't grow enormous all that quickly, IME.
Click to expand...

That's what I'm thinking. I have 48W of T5HO over the tank, buuut the light is suspended about a foot and a half above the surface of the water. A while back I did the math and I think it comes out to about 32 WPG at the substrate level (that's a very rough estimate). So far I've had little issue with algae besides some BBA when my CO2 died while I was away.

I'm attracted to the rubin in part b/c I know I can get it. Does it really not usually grow that large? I don't mind if it overshadows (i.e. floats on the top of the water) a bit anyway, although I may have some issues due to where I have my filter output (it would be perpendicular to the vertical growth of the plant). I'll look around for that crypt though (affinis), it looks like a nice alternative.

Thanks for the suggestions all :)
 
my rubin has gotten huge. Are you set one a single plant or interested in a stem? If you are looking for red you could always get rotala or ludwigia. They are easy to trim and propogate easily
 
Crypt lutea grows into beautiful lush bushes and the leaves are varying shades of greens and reds. Here's one of mine.

Picture 003.jpg
 
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