If you have ever seen a well planted aquarium you will understand my fascination with aquatic plants. I started out keeping fish but soon realised that the only way to really show off the beauty of the fish is to put them in their natural planted environment. Not only does it keep them healthier but it also makes watching them more interesting, seeing how they interact with their environment and other species as they come across them in the tank. A well planted tank will have a variety of different plants, tall small, broad and narrowed leaves and a variety of colours as well as different shades of green.
But before you reach for your wallet you really need to do your research. There is a huge range of plants available but not all of them are suited to the average aquarium. When you buy an aquarium these days it is likely to contain lights that are better suited to unplanted tanks. Plants grow in natural daylight and so need the right lighting to recreate the ideal growing conditions. Any photographer will tell you that fluorescent light is a lot different to natural light.
As in your garden, aquatic plants each require different conditions. You wouldn't mix sun loving plants such as sunflowers with shade loving ferns and the same applies in an aquarium. Make sure that the plants that you arte mixing together like the same water conditions and light values. Otherwise you will spend a great deal of time pruning off dead leaves from at least one of them.
Don't get too many varieties. Most award winning aquariums have a maximum of eight or nine different species in them. Too many makes it too busy and also increases the chances of you having a miss-match in terms of their preferred environment.
One problem for all aquarium keepers is algae. It will grow on plants and rocks, decorations and even on the aquarium glass. The planting in your aquarium will go a long way towards controlling this, if you do it right. When you set up your aquarium you set up the perfect conditions for plants to grow and algae is one of the simplest forms of plant life. If you have fish in the aquarium they will be adding their own fertiliser on a daily basis.
Plants control algae by competing for the food supply so if you do everything you can to keep your plants healthy then you are automatically doing everything you can to keep algae levels down.
When you start out, start with some of the easier to grow plants, don't be too ambitious. It's just like gardening, there is a huge variety of plants and it can take years to become an expert on even a few of them.
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