Coldwater Plants.

Hi mcdaniel. For the most part, you can keep the same assortment of aquatic plants in cold/temperate water tanks as you would most other fish tank setups. Most of the commonly available plants we keep are well suited for a vast range in temperature. As always, if you're not sure about a particular species be sure you check into plant profiles and care requirements just to be sure.

It wouldn't be very practical for me to attempt making an all-inclusive list of every possible plant variety that will do well in a goldfish tank. There are just too many of them to even try to list ALL of them together. I can give you some helpful information about a large number of common aquatic plants that would serve as a great start for you. Beyond this, you could expand the selection even further if you'd like and experiment with new varieties on your own.

A planted tank offers many advantages for keeping goldfish, in particular. Plants consume ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate and they become part of the biofiltration in your tank. Healthy growing plants also produce oxygen for the fish - and they feed off of excess nutrients produced by fish waste... thus, helping to keep the water quality high.

Your best bet starting out would be the more rugged, easy to grow plants. Your goldfish are going to nibble and graze on some of them, so don't use anything rare, expensive, temperamental, or particularly delicate. That would be wasting your money. Safer choices would be anubias (big and small), java ferns, most crypts, larger sags, dwarf onions and other crinums, anacharis, hornwort, bolbitus, sword plants, moss balls, and some mosses.. along with your choice of floaters (if you want any of those), such as duckweed, Amazon frogbit, or water lettuce.. even some water wisteria. This assortment would make a nice start and they let you maintain a beautiful aquascape that's heavily planted and will fare well having goldfish in there. Once the plants you start with from those get established, then you can add more delicate plants here and there to add more interest (if you want)... such as aponogetons, dwarf lilies, barclayas, and hygros. Or, really, anything else you're willing to experiment with. These plants all have more tender leaves, but even if they get nibbled on.. they also grow new replacement leaves quite fast.

Generally, you should avoid the super bright light plant species that would need higher levels of CO2. Goldfish need a lot of oxygenation so we we'll usually provide them with an air pump and bubble wand for this reason. They also love to play in those bubbles. This, of course, makes CO2 injection highly impractical for a goldfish tank because any CO2 you pump in there would just gas off right away.

Until your plants have well established root systems (or rhizomes attached to rocks/driftwood), it would help to place a few stones around them. Goldfish are always exploring the bottom in search for more food. (This is how plants often get uprooted in the beginning.) This is also your main consideration for substrate type. Goldfish commonly root around, taking up mouthfuls of sand/gravel and spitting it back out. Larger pieces of gravel can become lodged in the back of their mouths.
 
Thank you very much. I just wasn't totally sure on if there would be much of a difference between what kind of plants for cold water and freshwater. I'm not familiar with cold water species, other than my own goldfish I've had for years. Never gone research on them.
 
Great.. I'm glad you asked about this. A lot of us here are keeping our goldies in planted tanks. I just love how well such a lush green setting shows off the beauty and gracefulness of these fish.

As you begin setting this up with lots of plants, be sure to take some photos to show them off!
 
My Nymphaea lotus, Cryptocoryne wendtii and Cryptocoryne becketii were fine but the Egeria densa was not spared from any damage. Will try a new set of Egeria densa in my larger tank this time although I plan to use it as well for my new 435g pond. I never seem to run out of this pesky plant which I throw to my garden every two weeks and they cover almost two buckets everytime I throw them out.:grinyes:
 
Lagarosiphon major is often used in coldwater; it looks rather like Egeria densa but is more rigid and "crunchier".

Pondkeepers call it "Elodea crispa"; God alone knows why; it was never called that in the scientific literature.
 
Well, I've started adding some plants to the tank. I added Jungle Vals. lol. Let's see how well they do without CO2. I had extra so I took them out of my 20G tank and put them into the 30G.
 
As Kashta mentioned, uprooting can be a big issue. My largest problems were lighting and uprooting - which is why I've moved entirely over to plastic plants. I tried jungle vals, but was never able to provide enough light for them (I have a twin-strip coralife t-5), and the goldfish shredded them mercilessly, uprooting and then devouring them.
You should also keep in mind that the type of goldfish you have and how they were raised will have a lot to do with how your plants survive. If you have fancies, they are much less likely to demolish plants than are the singletail, more active varieties. Additionally, if your fish were raised with plants they are more likely to see them as environment than potential salad. My fish grew up with silk and plastic plants, and I feed lettuce to supplement their diet of pellets, so they see anything green as food. However, in my tosakin pond, the fish are still very young and get only bloodworms or live food, so they leave the jungle vals alone.
 
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