All right, guys, we are going to go over some plants today that are great for beginners.
Plants really help with your filtration, kinda bioload, all kinds of fun stuff in your tank,
so let's get at it and kinda look at some.
The first one we're gonna actually start out with is kinda your standard pothos, or Devil's Ivy is what it's called.
But as you can see, in our shrimp tank here we actually have it growing straight out of our tank,
and you can see the shrimp actually love playing in the roots, kinda hiding in there,
and it does help pull nitrates out of your water, so it does filter the water, so it doesn't just give
them a nice hiding place, but a lot of other benefits as well.
We've also done the same in this axolotl tank.
You can see we have a very large pothos growing here.
And we also have a monstera growing and as you can see,
well, with all the other plants that are growing on it, you can see it has a really great root system.
Just kinda hanging out, taking out all the bad stuff out of your tank.
and helping to filter just a little bit more than what you had in there before.
Next plants that work really well... we can kinda take a look at this one.
Now this one is a relatively slow-growing plant, low light requirements, but that is Anubias.
Anubias does kinda filter out of the water. It doesn't like to be completely submerged,
so some people like to actually plant it on rocks, wood, things like that,
and those roots will actually expand throughout the water column and help filter as well.
All right, guys, so this here is hornwort. It is a very fast-growing plant.
Works really well, help keeps the water clean. Sometimes as it gets mature though, it'll start dropping
needles, or its little leaves, so some people don't like that for having to clean all the time.
, but it does grow very rapidly. If you have guppies, things like that, it works great for hiding of the babies.
Even shrimp, anything like that, and it works great.
All right, so the next one...
This is bacopa. Bacopa is really cool.
That's the little one here.
It is actually in the mint family, so if you ever take it out and smell it, it is very aromatic, but
you don't need to do that because you want it to grow in your tank obviously.
The other really nice part is it propagates well. You can see the little roots kinda falling off there.
When it gets to the surface, it'll kinda bend over, drop a lot of roots.
It does take nutrients out of the water column, it takes nutrients out of the soil,
and then it's very easy to propagate if you cut it off and just replant it.
This next one is really cool. It's called vallisneria. It just looks like a really tall grass.
I always have this, like, dream of setting up a 75 gallon just loaded with vallisneria.
Just the whole tank of vallisneria and, like, 2 fish. That's it.
Just a really cool plant. Gets really tall.
Vallisneria can get, you know, upwards of 2 foot without any problem.
So I've always wanted to do just the 75 fully planted.
Works great in gravel. It's one of the few plants that we've had really good success with in sand bottom tanks,
so, if you're finding issues with plants not wanting to root in sandy tanks, definitely a great option.
Next one down here is gonna be cabomba.
Cabomba -bomba!
Cabomba's really cool. Again, lots of coverage.
Grows fairly decent.
Not a whole lot of, like, crazy growth to it, but you can easily split it and cut it apart if need be,
and just adds a different layer of color and texture to your tank.
Next one... we'll go with the wisteria.
That one's really cool. When we first get it in, sometime's the color's a little weird depending on where it was grown, but
it gets that really cool fern type texture to it. That one can be either as kind of a floating plant
and kinda spreads out or you can plant it in the ground and it will grow up to the top
and kinda spread out, but you can kinda clip it, trim it, and propagate it as well.
Look at that little guy there ! That's ludwigia.
That's the one to the righter side.
Now, different types of ludwigia , we usually have quite a few.
I believe actually the one on the left is Peruensis.
I believe the one on the right is just one of the red leaves. It might be the broad leaf.
But both of those guys are really good, easing-growing. Most of our customers have good luck with those.
They do have some nice color to them.
To get that color: brighter lights and iron definitely help out.
Pennywort works really well. Looks really cool. Has big monstrous leaves.
The one down here below you actually looks really cool too.
Really get some good roots kinda on it. That one does float as well.
It can be an emergent plant, it could be a bog plant, it could be a submerged plant,
so even in, like, terrariums, vivariums, that sort of thing, they work really well.
These guys were grown submerged, so they're not used to that humidity of coming out of the water,
but definitely something possible if you ever wanna go that route.
The other thing actually in that same tank, which I should've hit on in some of the other tanks,
but we have it growing in almost every one of our tanks is java moss.
Java moss is great. It grows really quickly. It takes a lot of the waste and stuff out of your tank.
That stuff is just great great coverage for fish. Makes it just look a lot more naturalistic,
and, in my opinion, it just looks cool anyways!
All right, next, we're gonna move into some floating plants that work really well.
This one here is salvinia minima, or water spangles, is what it's called.
If you get really close in on it, it actually looks like mini...
miniature, like, venus flytraps. Their hairy leaves. It's actually a type of fern.
But they are really cool.
These ones have had a lot of water movement so they're kinda staying smaller.
When there's very little water movement, the leaves get really large,
but it's definitely a cool plant and easy to grow
with a lot of light, but you do not want a lot of water movement with your floating plants,
otherwise they just stress out.
Next floating plant we're gonna go to is gonna be duckweed!
Duckweed grows very rapidly.
It'll take over your whole tank, but it works really well at taking out excess nutrients
and then you can just scoop it out, throw it away, and let it kinda repopulate.
I've had somebody tell me before... well, kind of compare it to the glitter of the fish world
because no matter what you do, you can't get rid of it.
The next plant that does really really well is...
dwarf water lettuce. Wow, I lost my train of thought there.
Anyways, the dwarf water lettuce. Now these guys are all kinda smaller pieces. Usually we harvest them as
they start getting bigger to sell, so I don't have any, like, full size ones that you can really see and look at,
but this stuff is really cool, grows really well.
Bigger pieces as opposed to the duckweed, so it lets a little bit more light through
but gets really cool and large and the roots really hang down, give a lot of hiding spots to your smaller fish,
and just looks cool.
And here is a much bigger version for you guys.
Some of these are getting nipped on, but these are some bigger of the dwarf water lettuce.
And then you can see the roots on this one and how big they get.
A lot of nice places for shrimp to hang out.
My shrimp love them.
This one we currently don't have growing in the store, but I'll get you some to show ya.
This is an Amazon frogbit.
This stuff's probably one of my favorites.
Really big leaves with a lot of air pockets that help them float.
They look really cool when it kinda takes over the whole top of your tank.
Again, gets some really nice roots on them and look really awesome.
All right, guys, so that is all the plants kinda that we really carry right now that are great basic plants for you to go with.
If you guys do have any questions, definitely send us a message, let us know, and we'll be more than happy to help you out!
Otherwise, come on in, see us, and we can show you around.