What plants should you get?
Ahoy, and welcome to my comprehensive guide to the quintessential question of planted tanks: What plants should I get? Naturally, the question has a lot more factors to it than just the five words, so let’s break it down.
Why do you want plants in your aquarium?
The first question to decide on is why you want plants in the first place. What is your goal? To make an absolutely beautiful, eye-catching display tank? Do you just want to enrich your fishes lives and offer them some live plants to hang out in? Are you planting a shrimp tank so the shrimp have somewhere to graze? Or do you want plants to help with filtration? If your answer is “All of the above” that is perfectly fine too!
If you’re looking for display plants you should strongly consider investing extra into CO2 and advanced lighting. You don’t need a $2000 system, but at least spending an extra $100 on CO2 and splurging for a $150 light rather than a $50 one will make an absolutely tremendous difference. Higher lighting will allow your plants to color up way more and look much prettier, and CO2 will allow you to actually run high lighting without turning your tank into an algae breeding ground and make your plants much healthier in the processs. Check out our cheap CO2 guide here for more tips.
If you just want some plants without the goal of making an instagram-worthy aquascape, you pretty much only need two ingredients: A light, and fertilizer. Any light will work, theoretically, but the stronger your light the prettier plants you’ll be able to grow. The LED bar that came in the hood of your aquarium won’t be enough to grow most plants. Also, remember that the taller your tank is, the further the light has to penetrate so the stronger the light you’ll need. Generally the higher the wattage the stronger the light, but a great starting point is this Hygger planted tank light.
Fertilizer is generally easy: Either use a substrate with nutrients like Fluval Stratum, or use a different substrate and add root tablets. You should also dose fertilizer into the water every so often, I personally really like Thrive+ fertilizer.
When you’re shopping for plants in this category, you want to focus on low or med tech plants. High tech plants may look pretty but they’ll all melt away shortly after adding them to your tank.
If you’re looking for plants that help filter your tank then your top priority should be to search for fast growing plants. The faster a plant grows, the more nitrate it absorbs which means the more it helps filter your tank. Floaters are by far the best option for this, especially small ones like Salvinia Minima or even Duckweed, but plants like Pearlweed, Cabomba Green, etc that grow very fast and bushy will work fantastically too. Mosses are also a great option for this.
If your shrimp or fish want plants then you can pretty much plant anything! Shrimp especially love biofilm though, which you’ll find in abundance on driftwood as well as plants with a lot of surface area like mosses. Personally, I just plant all my shrimp tanks full of loads of plants and they’re always happy.
Enough with the questions, which plant should I buy?
Now that you have a general idea of what sort of plants you should be shopping for, your next easiest step is simply to filter your plants. Our site has simple categories so you can just select “Easy plants” or “Mosses” and see everything you’d like, and most other plant sites will have the same.
That said, a top recommendation I make for everyone is to start with some easy plants. If you’re new to planted tanks or you’re having some trouble with plants in your tank, try out some easy stems. Cabomba Green, Rotala Rotundafolia, Water Wisteria, etc are all super easy to grow and grow extremely quick and hardy, making them perfect for nearly any tank.
You can also try out some epiphytes, which are plants that don’t need to be planted in the substrate and instead suck nutrients out of the water directly. This includes plants like Java Fern, Anubias, Bucephalandra, etc. With epiphytes, however, it is also crucial that you don’t bury the rhizome (the root / body of the plant) so it can get waterflow, but you can safely set it atop the substrate if it can be held in place. I personally like to superglue epiphytes to rocks and hardscape.
Mosses are also a great start, and can make many tanks look really nice. Most mosses don’t need anything fancy to grow at all and can just be attached to rocks or wood via superwood or thread.
Now if you’re looking for display plants, its easy, and its fun. Just make sure your tank can support whatever plants you like, and just pick ones that are pretty! I always like to get a range of different plants, colors, textures, and sizes so when I plant them they don’t all just blend together.
If you need any additional help in picking plants, please reach out to us! We’ll be happy to help you pick a plant or ten!
