Nano plant suggestions

C

Cruzer

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May 14, 2011
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I am looking to order some plants from Arizona Aquatic Gardens, however I have run in to difficulty in choosing the plants.

That being said I need some help choosing some plants, but first off a little but of information on my setup. I have a finnext 4 gallon aquarium with 13 watts of 10000k lighting that I run for approximately 8-9 hours a day. I am dosing CSM+B, KN03, K2S04, and KH2P04 using the Extimative Index. I am also running DIY co2 24 hours a day. The only plants that I have at the moment are two Dwarf lily's one of which is doing great the other's bulb keeps developing hair algae. I want a tank that is thickly planted. Here are some of the plants that I like, please let me know if they are acceptable for my setup and if not please give me some suggestions making sure to keep in mind the tiny footprint of my tank.

1.Dwarf Baby Tears (Foreground)
2.Marimo Ball (Foreground)
3. Frog bit (surface)
4. Dwarf Hair grass (Midground) suggest other options
5. Suggest background something thats not green or has ther callers in it aside from green

Thanks,

Drew
 
For a surface/floater plant in a tank that size, I'd go for Salvinia minima over frogbit - frogbit can get pretty big (I have some specimens out in my pond right now that are easily as big around as my hand).

Other small plants you might want to look into include:
Marsilea spp., esp. Marsilea minuta
Hemianthus glomeratus/ H. micranthemoides (HM/baby tears)
Micranthemum umbrosum (MU/"giant" baby tears... which are still pretty small LOL)
Lobelia cardinalis 'Small Form'
Helanthium spp. (chain swords)
Lilaeopsis spp. (micro swords)
Staurogyne repens or S. 'Porto Velho'
Ranalisma rostrata
Pellia
Riccardia chamedryfolia (mini pellia)
Cryptocoryne parva (Crypt parva)
Glossostigma elatinoides
Bacopa sp. 'Japan'
any kind of moss

I would lose the lily bulbs, too. The term "dwarf" is very much relative with any water lily. All it really means is your plant won't grow to the size of a small pond. So-called dwarf lilies can easily take up the better part of a large tank if grown in proper conditions.
 
Looks to be a 10" tall tank? Some rotala or ludwigia of various species would add a splash of red. You would just need to keep up on trimming since under your conditions I'm sure they would be growing pretty quickly.
 
+1^

and also on the anubias nana petite, a beautiful plant
 
I have alot of the species listed above in my tank, here is a pic so you can see how they look

DSCN8004_01.jpg


darf baby tears(HC) front right, marsilea front left, riccia behind that, cript parva behind that and dwarf hairgrass in the back on the left, the stem plants are baby tears(HM) plus a few others, there is a anubias nana petite behind the HC and crypt parva to the right of it.. also just to the left of the driftwood is some micro sword(Lilaeopsis) also directly to the right of the rocks and driftwood is a mini cardinal lobelia

with your lighting and CO2 you should be fine with anything you wanna grow.., I would recomend using an airstone at night as plants dont use co2 when the lights are off..

hope it helps to get some ideas, I have a bit of colectoritis so I did not do a species tank yet, however I am going to be setting up some nano spaces for local fish stores around here and plan on having no more than 3 species of plants in each...

also you could even consider a blyx species I know there is at least one that gets a dark red as a backround plant, you will have to watch how much space it takes up, when settin up the nano I tried to focus on small leaved plants to appearance of a large tank when you see a picture of it.. same with rocks and driftwood..

also in a tank this small its really easy for the different species to try to invade on other plants, especially the dwarf hair grass so you will want to use you rocks and driftwood to try to stop this and keep them in the spaces you want
 
Last edited:
kineticcomfort said:
I have alot of the species listed above in my tank, here is a pic so you can see how they look

DSCN8004_01.jpg


darf baby tears(HC) front right, marsilea front left, riccia behind that, cript parva behind that and dwarf hairgrass in the back on the left, the stem plants are baby tears(HM) plus a few others, there is a anubias nana petite behind the HC and crypt parva to the right of it.. also just to the left of the driftwood is some micro sword(Lilaeopsis) also directly to the right of the rocks and driftwood is a mini cardinal lobelia

with your lighting and CO2 you should be fine with anything you wanna grow.., I would recomend using an airstone at night as plants dont use co2 when the lights are off..

hope it helps to get some ideas, I have a bit of colectoritis so I did not do a species tank yet, however I am going to be setting up some nano spaces for local fish stores around here and plan on having no more than 3 species of plants in each...

also you could even consider a blyx species I know there is at least one that gets a dark red as a backround plant, you will have to watch how much space it takes up, when settin up the nano I tried to focus on small leaved plants to appearance of a large tank when you see a picture of it.. same with rocks and driftwood..

also in a tank this small its really easy for the different species to try to invade on other plants, especially the dwarf hair grass so you will want to use you rocks and driftwood to try to stop this and keep them in the spaces you want
Click to expand...

Your tank is very pretty!
 
some of my favorites are downoi, rotala mini 1 and 2, anubias petite and marsilea.
 
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