Of course, nothing comes without a price. Negative aspects of keeping real plants in your tank include:
Keeping real plants in your aquarium requires you to actually keep something alive in your tank besides your fish. Keeping real plants in your tank means that there is one more thing you have to nurture. They have specific needs that differ from your fish needs. You'll need to educate yourself on how to best grow plants in your tank.
Keeping real plants in your tank requires maintenance time. Plants will require you to trim dead or decaying parts as well as cull parts that are too numerous or prune the plant back to keep it the appropriate size for your tank.
Real plants will require replacement as they don't last forever (or at least not as long as manufactured plants).
Plants require more lighting than your fish do.
Real plants require CO2 reactors if you want to keep your plants at their best. If you have an expensive plant set up, you may want to consider this.
Plants create waste when they die which negatively affect the water quality.
Plants can often introduce pesky snails, unwanted fish, or even hydras who hitch a ride along from the pet store.
Real plants can introduce disease to either your other plants or your fish in your tank!
Real plants may not be able to keep up with herbivorous fishes' appetites! Nibbled plants don't usually look that great.
Keeping real plants in your tank may require you to limit yourself with suitable substrates. You can also try to keep the plant potted in its own substrate, buried within the more general substrate (gravel) that you keep in your tank.
Overall, it can be a tough decision for the fish aquarium hobbyist to decide whether to incorporate real plants or manufactured plants into their tanks.
Popular Freshwater Plants
If you decide that you want to dabble with real plants, here is a list of some of the most popular (read easy) plants for freshwater aquariums:
Java moss
Java fern
Crypts
Valersia
Water Sprite
Hygrophila polysperma
Anubias
Duckweed
Popular Saltwater Plants & Algae
For saltwater aquariums, the following species are commonly used. Saltwater aquariums, however, use plants fairly sparsely and favor the use of corals and invertebrates as alternative (and very interesting) forms of non-fish livestock. Historically, algae used to be classified as plants. Now, biologists separate algae from plants taxonomically.
For plants compatible in saltwater environments, you could try:
Red Mangrove plant
Algae is usually categorized as either being micro-algae or macro-algae. We'll focus on macro-algae (seaweed) that work well in aquariums. You could try:
Halimeda, also known as the Cactus algae, is one of the oldest cultured algae you'll find in a saltwater tank (its inclusion goes back to the 1960s).
Red Gracilaria Algae
Reasons to have plants in your tank
If you're having trouble deciding whether to use a real plant or a manufactured plant, remember that either way you go, having plants in your tank is a positive thing. Here are a few reasons that plants make sense (real or fake):
Plants in your tank give the aquarium a more natural habitat.
Plants in your tank can give your fish both physical security and help them feel better by having that physical security (even when there aren't any actual threats in the tank.) More specifically, plants in your tank will give fish:
Good resting places
Good places for new fish to hide, get acclimatized, and feel secure
Plants in your tank give fish spawning ground.
Plants in your tank also provide natural habitat for baby fish (fry). Of course, you'll want to move fry into their own tank if you want them to make it.
We hope that with the information provided in this article, you can decide for yourself whether to add real plants to your tank or not. Even if you decide to stick with manufactured plants, your options are so great today that your tank's aesthetic appeal won't suffer with the addition of "fake" plants. Good planting!
