The Puffer Forum

I currently have a 20 gallon tank full of fake plants. I have an algae problem and saw recommended somewhere that using real plants will help with that. I was wondering if it is an easy thing to have the real plants? I am afraid I will put them in and they will all die. Thanks in advance,
Jennifer

My bro has live plants in his tank and they have been doing extremely well and have grew over double in size and he hasn't done anything really special to his tank to keep them alive so in mt brothers case, no they are not hard to take care of.

This site http://www.plantgeek.net/ is really an awesome resource for information about planting your tanks. The people on there are friendly and helpful, pretty much its like this forum, only for plants. There is some members of this forum that appear to have very green thumbs judging by their puffer of the month entries. I think Rocker might be the green man incarnate

Some have luck with certain plants while others don't have luck with the same ones. It varies, and much will depend on the lighting and type of plants you get.

Plants can be effective in improving the water quality in general and reducing algae as well as adding an attractive, interesting feature to the aquarium.

What sort of lighting do you have?

As a (very) rough guide if you have between 1 to 2 fluorescent T8 lamps your lighting will be low to low/moderate. Whilst this isn’t sufficient for many plant species there are quite a few different options worth trying.

You’ll need a substrate of at least 4cm’s but I can recommend most of the Hygrophila varieties especially Hygrophila polysperma. It’s a hardy fast growing stem plant that’s suitable for a vast range of water conditions. It’s also very easy to propergate.

It’s widely available and a great start if you are interested in live plants.

If you tell us more about your setup we can help more, let us know about tank size, filtration, lighting, water condtions, subsrate type and fish that you have

I have a 20 gallon tank with a whisper brand filter. I also have a heater that heats the water to 78 to 80 degrees. My substrate is just some black and white pebble gravel approximately 3 inches deep. I have 2 Dp's and a small algae eater in the tank. As for lighting, I am not sure about it, it is a hood light I bought at the petstore. It is on from 8-12 hours a day, but I am having an algae problem. I have a bunch of fake plants, but they look fake, so I would like a more natural look.
Thanks in advance
Jennifer

I would go for some easy growing plants like vallis and anubias as they are low light plants. If you want to upgrade the light at some time you can go for more demanding plants

You need to tell us about the lighting. Is it one long tube that has pins on the ends? Is it one or two shorter bulbs that screw into a socket like a normal light bulb?

How many watts are the bulbs that are in it now (it should say on the bulbs).