How to care for plants?

[leafgirl115]

I was wondering how to care for live plants? What do you feed them?

[Dong]

Put it simply, Plant Growth=lighting+CO2. You can also add some liquid supplements. Please visit http://www.aquarticles.com/articles/plants/index.html for more information about plant care. It is a great site.

[Damon]

Even better site......................
http://www.aquatic-plants.org/articl...ges/index.html

[leafgirl115]

ok im confused on the co2. Do you buy it at the fish store? And how often do you feed the plants?

[DUSTIN323]

Originally Posted by leafgirl115

ok im confused on the co2. Do you buy it at the fish store? And how often do you feed the plants?

You can buy tablets thta release c02, but I don't really hear of people using them. C02 is essential, but not to add it to the water. The fish produce C02. You can get different types of C02 dispensers though. The simplest being a yeast-type C02 injection. It's not hard to grow live plants as long as you research. The right equipment, right care, & right plants will help out. There's plants you can glow under indacascent lighting, then again there's more complex plants that will need dual flourescents or power compact lighting. A good substrate like Flourite will help, pricey but there is also substrates that can be mixed with standard gravel or sand & will still help out the plants. Adding fertilizers isn't even nessacary for all plants, in fact some fertilizers hurt cartain plants. Like Flourish Excel will hurt anarcharis real bad. Your best bet is to determine what you want, need, & can afford. www.plantgeek.net is a great site for aquatic plants as well as individual plant profiles.

[leafgirl115]

Well the reson i was asking is that i alredy have 2 live plants. One is a Limnophial plant and the other i dont know what it is. The limnophial plant had brown spots on it(im am a newb) Some one told me to get a plant and i did..... Im not shur what to do. I had no idea tha ti neaded to feed them co2
or anything... what do you sugest?

[TheOldSalt]

What kinds of lights do you have on your tank, and for that matter, what size tank is it? Plants need good lighting, you see, or al the food & CO2 in the world will be useless to them.

[leafgirl115]

I have the light on for 12 hours. Its a 20g tank. And the light is a fluoresent one.

[Damon]

Probably limnophilia aromatica, very attractive plant but requires more care and lighting than low tech plants. I would suggest reading up on planted tanks. They can be as easy or as hard as you want them to be.

[leafgirl115]

thanks hear is a pic of it:

[Damon]

OK the one on the left is ambulia (limnophilia indica). Real easy plant. The left looks like an onion plant but could be a val. Hard to tell from the pic. I would lean towards a val of some sort. Is it a bulb, bunch plant?

[dmarcus]

if your looking for good co2 without getting an injector and worrying about all the fuss flourish excel organic carbon is a great product made by seachem that really made my plants start to bush out and fill in. i recomend it highly, cheap too like 6 bucks. : )

[Damon]

Excel will kill anacharis and vals if dosed properly. 1/2 doseage is reccommended for these plants. DIY Co2 is cheap and will work fine. If you only plan on having 2 plants, I wouldn't worry about adding anything. Not worth the cost for 2 plants.

[xerxeswasachump]

Dude, your plants will be just fine. Just let your fish dirty up the tank a little more and let the substrate get some mulm in it. I would stay away from fertilizers, every time i have tried using that stuff i end up with an algae bloom.
None of the plants your have are that high maintenance. Also, it is common for parts of a new plant to die off, new stuff will grow to replace it.
However, if you start seeing yellow areas allover the whole plant i would work on getting them some more CO2. How many fish do you have living in there? What are they?