Is my aquarium lighting too high?

Evanleigh said:
Well there you go.... sold as an aquarium plant at Petco. That's where I bought it.
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The chain fish stores are known to regularly sell several terrestrial plants for the aquarium. The Fountain grass, ferns, and a species of Dracaena are the more common. It pays to research plants as with any fish. Many of us have gone down this road.:rant2:
 
I found a good Aquarium plant site that sells plants. It is aptly called AquariumPlants.com I don't know if getting plants shipped is a good idea, but buying the the plants from the big pet store chains aren't good as I've just found out. How do you get your plants?
 
Buying aquarium plants online is typically just fine. It's, let's say, an adventure sometimes if you don't know much about the plants you are getting. You can read til you are mentally exhausted and still get mixed answers to your questions about light, space, and nutrient requirements. Experience pays, and if you don't have any with a particular plant you are interested, just ask here! Most of us in the planted tank club have tried many of the plants you are going to be interested in already and can give you advice. (It's not a real club, but you will figure out who is in it by responses. Byron is the Grand Poobah.)

Here are a few hints that will help you look in the right direction... If the description says one of these key words, you will know what to consider or not. I will say this: All of these are not always correct, but they are a "general" truth most of the time.

Slow Grower = Low Light Requirements
Low Light = Slower Growth
Rhizome = Plant that should not be buried in the substrate. It doesn't refer to a plant group, but rather what its leaves and/or stems grow from. Think ferns.
Fern = Slow Growing Water Column Feeder. Attach it to something, don't bury the rhizome.
Fast Grower = Requires Medium or High Light to grow best. It may still grow in low light, but often looks less appealing or just limps along.
Stem Plant = Medium/Fast Grower (see above)
Carpet Plant = High Light Requirements and likely CO2 supplementation
Sword = Heavy Root Feeder. It will do better with root tabs in the substrate near it, but in a well established aquarium may be fine without it. The bigger the sword, the more roots to feed.

Sizes and recommended tank positions (also generalizations):
Foreground = Small, low growing less than 3" in height. May be low and wide or short and compact.
Midground = Medium sized height up to 8"-10". Plant it in the middle ground for a graduated height increase from foreground to background. If it's leafy, it could get WIDE... leave room for width especially on these.
Background = Tall and/or wide. These will likely reach the surface of your tank in the 12"-24"+ category. Plant them in the back or sides unless you are looking to make a curtain that blocks your view into the tank

I wish someone had explained this to me, but I figured it out. Again, these are generalizations, so take them with a grain of salt (and check to see if they are compatible with brackish water before adding salt.) Have fun! Also, check with other members that are close to you as they may be willing to share with you or sell you some plants at a lower rate than online retailers. I personally trim and ship all the time rather than trash my trimmings.
 
ZorroNet said:
Buying aquarium plants online is typically just fine. It's, let's say, an adventure sometimes if you don't know much about the plants you are getting. You can read til you are mentally exhausted and still get mixed answers to your questions about light, space, and nutrient requirements. Experience pays, and if you don't have any with a particular plant you are interested, just ask here! Most of us in the planted tank club have tried many of the plants you are going to be interested in already and can give you advice. (It's not a real club, but you will figure out who is in it by responses. Byron is the Grand Poobah.
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Dude, I wanna be the grand Poohbah!!

Anyway, what Dave is saying is correct info. There are a lot of good sites on the internet that sell plants and what they are selling at their sites is almost always going to be a true aquatic - and if it's not, in all likelihood they will say it's not. They want your continued business, not just a quick buck from you.

Aquabid is also a good site to get less common plants that you would generally see elsewhere and again, like Dave said, if you find something interesting and are not sure about it, ask here. More than likely someone has grown it and can give you some feedback.

The Marketplace here always has a good bit of action, again with plants that run the gamut from common to rare. I buy and sell (and sometimes trade) here on a semi-regular basis
 
ROYWS3 said:
Dude, I wanna be the grand Poohbah!!
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Roy is Deputy Poobah. He is also an experienced planted aquarium aficionado... just not as sciencey and published as Byron LOL!

I have bought, sold, and traded a fair amount of plants in the Marketplace here too. It is a great place to find plants that other members have AND you can just ask them about them if you have questions. It's a good way to go about it. That's why Roy is Deputy Poobah... He takes up the slack I forget to mention :) I'm just a wise-cracking hobbyist.
 
I will definitely be taking you guys up on as much advice/ information as I can get and maybe some plants if you want to sell. Here are just a few questions I have atm... I want to carpet but have no clue about C02? What carpet plants would be best in part gravel substrate? If I carpeted the driftwood would it eventual creep out to cover the rest of the tank?

I also want to use some java moss without it taking over the world. I saw a tank of at a LFS and the tank was one huge mass of the stuff. You could probably sit on it and not sink.

It is hard being patient but even so it seems that I have already made a few mistakes. I love my ruffle leaf sword and my other two Non-aquatic plants. The creeping charlie is a super messy plant and I've had to clean out the filter intake tube a few times already, but the fish seem to like it quite a bit. Is it a plant that will grow on the surface of the tank as well? My two new micro sword plants I put in last week are looking really crappy. How come they are already yellowing? They looked healthy when I bought them.
 
Evanleigh, I would suggest that you re-consider having a carpet plant at the moment. You may be a little green for them and their high light high maintenance nature. I say that with all due respect and personal experience. I added some glossostigma elatanoids (a carpet plant) to a 29 gallon that didn't have enough light, and it got tall and nasty looking! I made that purchase based on some misinformation I read online post by an individual seller that was trying to off-load some plants on eBay... my first mistake for not double checking plant requirements information! Based on your other threads, I don't think the light you have has enough intensity for carpet plants. You are better off with some "easy" plants so you can first establish your tank a bit more, and re-work or replace your light (if you want to go high light.) You may decide that a carpet isn't worth the added expense of adding more light intensity and/or CO2 supplementation. I can't make that decision for you, but I can share my experience to help you out.

I have had the same thing happen to swords... They are heavy root feeders as I said before. Yellow leaves point to a nutrient deficiency. Try some root tabs like Byron suggested. They will likely green back up if you act quickly enough. Root tabs are pretty cheap! Yellowing in swords is usually due to a lack of iron in the substrate. After a while, feeding fish and some root tabs will increase the nutrients available in both the water and the substrate provided you don't vacuum them all up :) Remember, these will take a little while to build up, and plants will use what they need during the process. I don't dose ferts myself, BUT I am not the Grand Poobah.
 
By "micro sword" I assume you mean Lilaeopsis brasiliensis. This is not related closely (being a different botanical family) with the common "swords" like Helanthium tenellum (the pygmy chain sword) or the larger species in Echinodorus, but in appearance it is basically a very small form of H. tenellum. Generally this plant needs higher light and thus more nutrients including perhaps CO2. But, having said that, I am keeping it alive (just) in my 70g with moderate light and no CO2. It is a very slow growing plant, and even those with high-tech systems report it being slow. Here is some info from AquariumPlants, a site another member mentioned previously in this thread:
http://www.aquariumplants.com/Micro_Sword_Lilaeopsis_Brasiliensis_p/po11.htm?1=1&CartID=0

Can't remember if you are dosing fertilizers, but a complete/comprehensive liquid will probably be necessary. It is best in a sand substrate, as it spreads (very slowly) by runners similar to the chain swords, but I had it do much the same in a fine gravel substrate which actually was Flourite. It has grown just as well in plain sand with the same liquid fertilizers. Substrate tabs will be good too, though I never bother with these for the runner swords, just the larger single plants. But you can cut them in half and spread them around.

Byron.
 
Thanks for the advice guys. I will wait on carpeting til I know what kind of lighting my system has. As I have not started to fertalize anything yet, I will get both the pellets and liquid ferts as it seems like I will need different types for different plants. I'm going to try to save my micro swords which are indeed the lilaeopsis brasiliensis.

What type of plant would the Poobahs, grand or deputy or likewise, suggest to cover the lava and/rock or driftwood? It has to be something not too complicated, of course.
 
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