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Could i put some plants into my gravel substrate, would they do fine there or do i need to buy some special substrate?

They would do better in a special substrate but I have plants in regular gravel and they seem to do just fine for my purpose

Hi,
Your post shows an empty 20 gallon tank so I gather
that you are asking questions before filling it.
An established tank will support plants just fine
with aquarium gravel. The bacteria that breaks down
the fish waste, also provides the nutrients that plants
need to live and grow.

Note, I said an "established tank." If it is new
as your seems to be, you will want to start out with
some floating plants, and then as the tank cycles,
provide some fast growing stem plants. At that time
you can either leave the floating ones, or cull
them down in quantity.

One of the ways plants are grouped, is by how much
light it takes for them to thrive. Low, medium, and
high are the three groups. Figure out what the total
wattage of your lighting system is and then in your
case, divide by 20(tank capacity), that will give you
your number of watts/gallon. Low light plants like
between .5 and 1 watts/gallon, medium are 2-3 watts/
gallon, and 3+ watts are high demand plants.
Choose from the grouping that matches your watts/gallon.
If it works out that you are in the Medium area, then
you can use plants in the low and medium range and stay
away from those in the high demand range.

For more reading, check out this site:
http://home.infinet.net/teban/substrat.htm

Frank


[span class="edited"][Edited by FRANK 2004-07-02 17:56][/span]

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Thanks, I want some javafern or anything else that is easy to take care of.