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im about to leap into live plants for my 29 gallon community and was wondering what would be good! im new to plants so im not sure. 2 mollies 3 white skirt tetras, 6 danios, 2 african butterfly fish, and 3 mystery snails. what would be some good, pretty easy, plants to put in and what about a floating plant for my butterflys? thanks

i like feesh

Hi,
It sounds like a very nice tank. We need to know about
the lighting that you have on it. Is it one or two bulb
flourscents? What are the wattages of the bulbs?

Plants are classified as floating or non, and also by the
amount of light that they need to thrive.
For the latter, we use the terms "Low, Medium, and High."
Low light plants are plants that thrive around 1-1.5 watts
per gallon. Medium light plants thrive between 2 and 3
watts per gallon. High light plants thrive with 3+ watts
per gallon.

To figure out how many watts per gallon your tank has,
you total the wattages of the bulbs and divide that total
by the capacity of the tank. For instance, if you have
two 40 watt bulbs over a 29 gallon tank, you would have
2 x 40 = 80/29 = 2.75 watts per gallon and you could
expect any of the low and very nearly every of the
medium light plants to thrive.

Frank


-->>> The Confidence of Amateurs, is the Envy of Professionals <<<--

i looked everywhere the wattage is no where to be found i called the help line but they were closed... can you atleast tell me what plants are good for the fish and what not and ill get back to you on the wattage?

i like feesh

Your fish are okay with all plants, it doesn't matter with plants. It all comes down to the lights and if you can provide for the plants. The main reasons a fish couldn't be kept with a plant would be if it's an herbivore, in which case it would eat almost all plants, or a digger, in which case it would uproot almost all plants. None of your fish fall in these categories. The other way fish can't be kept with plants is indirectly due to their water; for example, if a fish requires brackish water, that knocks out a lot of plants that can't take brackish water.

The wattage is usually marked on the bulbs themselves. I assume if you have no idea, you still have the bulbs that come with the tank, which usually isn't very much. The lights that come with the tank would generally provide only approximately 1 watt per gallon. If the bulbs are old then they're even less bright.

Plants that would be appropriate in a tank with the standard wattage include hornwort, java fern, java moss, Anubias, and Cryptocoryne. You should consider Anubias nana, a small Anubias variant, as the standard Anubias barteri would be huge and would take out the room in half of your tank. Note that Crypts require a stable tank as they "melt" with the shock of a big change, but many are good, low-light plants. They are therefore inappropriate for new tanks, but are otherwise pretty good plants.

--------------------------------------------
The aquarist is one who must learn the ways of the biologist, the chemist, and the veterinarian.

i'd also recommend banana lillies. they send up beautiful leaves to the surface, which your butterflies would love cruising around. they have really strong root systems once established, and IME are pretty much indestructible.

wisteria and anacharis are two that I have had decent success with... I have .75 watts/gallon in my 20g and 1.5 watts/gallon in my 10g and both plants thrive in both tanks. I also have banana plants, they are really awesome looking...

good luck! once you go planted live, you'll never go back!