best live plants for my fahaka?

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Fahakapuffer
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best live plants for my fahaka?

Post by Fahakapuffer »

Here is a list of live plants i am able to get for my tank, what would best suit my fahaka puffer and what do i need/need to do to make sure it grows big and healthy.

moneywort
water wisteria
acorus
corkscrew val
java ferns
swords
hornwort
cabomba
green mondo grass
frill
scarlet timble
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Pufferpunk
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Re: best live plants for my fahaka?

Post by Pufferpunk »

Personally, all I keep are Anubis, because he really loves to rearrange plants & chew them up.
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kilofey
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Re: best live plants for my fahaka?

Post by kilofey »

none! haha im just kidding... i have 2 amazon swords that sometimes he plucks a few leaves off and othertimes he doesnt seem to notice them... and i have another plant too not sure of the name tho... and he plucks them at times too... the rest of my plants are plastic. oh and he doesnt touch my java moss... if that helps
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emartin
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Re: best live plants for my fahaka?

Post by emartin »

The five easiest plants I have ever come across for keeping alive in fish tanks without adding any chemicals or anything is:
Anubias sp
Java Fern
African Fern (never did well in my high pH tanks though)
Sword Plants
Aponogeten boivinanus <---awesome plant, very easy to grow

I was never able to keep Vallisneria alive, but that is mostly because the manufactured sand (3M colorquartz) in my tanks choked the roots and the vallisneria kept getting super stressed since I had to acclimate them from a pH of 6 from the tanks they were in at my lfs to a pH of 8.4. People tell me though that in natural sand (all purpose sand from hardware stores, silica (Pool Filter) sand, etc) vallisneria does very well..

Beware of Java Fern though. Once it gets settled in they grow like weeds and produce MANY offspring

Keep in mind that except for vallisneria (maybe sword plants as well, but they always did best with less light with me) all the above plants I listed all prefer low lighting (either light pollution from the room, other tanks & their lights, or light from outside the house, or just standard cheap fluorescent bulb). Otherwise they will get hair algae and other algaes and diseases like crazy. Now, Siamese Algae Eaters and Siamese Flying Foxes will eat the algae but no guarantee your puffer won't eat the fish (the SAE and SFF are very fast and hyperactive fish, but puffers are usually nocturnal hunters aren't they? lol).

If you want to go very cheap but are plants nonetheless, you can always buy "lucky bamboo". Petsmart or Petco usually sell it already acclimated to underwater aquarium conditions but if you find it cheap for sale somewhere you can always try to acclimate it yourself by slowly submerging it.

And if you are concerned about the puffer uprooting the plants, one thing you can consider is using clay/terracotta flower pots inside the tank with gravel in them to anchor the plants roots.
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