I decided to start adding plants to my 5 gallon aquarium. I have a java fern and an anubia right now. What other plants do you recommend I put in there? I have a 10 watt fluorescent bulb in there.

Are the plants you have able to grow with that amount of light? Java moss is really easy to grow and looks great growing on wood . My tilapia and pleco prune it down nicely so it doesn't get too long and rangey. Much of the wood in my 100 gallon is completely covered with a beautiful carpet of this stuff. The plants you have are low light requiring plants, and unless you get better lighting you should stick with such. I don't know any other low light requiring plants besides Java moss except for say a different sized anubias. Anubias comes in small and large leaf varieties and I would buy a peice of aquarium wood and tie some of the anubias to it, and you can also tie Java moss to it as well. I like having the anubias bartari(large leaf) in the back tied to wood, and the anubias nana(small leaf) in the mid way in areas either growing on wood or in the gravel. Both will grow in gravel or tied to wood. When you tie these plants on wood they will eventually attatch to the wood with their roots and it looks really cool as the roots grow down around the wood on their way to the gravel.

Hair grass is really nice but needs quite a bit of light. I don't know where you heard that it doesn't, but it'll just end up dying unless you have a better light system. You probably have the anubias nana, the smaller leaf variety. The bartari has leaves up to 4-6 inches long. As for forground plants I don't know of any plants of the low light variety that'll fit this category. Java moss really needs wood to grow on. It'll grow as a free floating clump or it can be weighted down with a rock or something, but it doesn't stay short and root into gravel which is what you want in a forground type of plant. For me I like a bit of bare gravel at the front of my tanks and then about 1/3 to 1/2 the way in I'll have some small anubias. I now have some VHO and PC lights which are good lights for grass and riccia, so I'm going to try to grow some grass of some sort, but I doubt you can grow that with what you have. There are bubs called SHO compact fluorescents that will screw into any incandescent bulb sockets and they would be strong enough for hair grass. I think they sell for less than $10 each and one would be enough for your little tank.

Petsmart, Petco, Wallmart, these stores don't have the SHO lights as these stores have very poor selections for aquarium supplies though I just saw a Power Compact fixture at Petco yesterday and that would be good if your tank was 2 feet wide. The problem is that your tank is only a foot wide, I'd guess, and these lights are about 2 feet wide. The SHO bulbs would be perfect but you probably would have to order them unless you can find an aquarium only store, and then they may not have them either. The SHO compact fluorescents need a regular screw in type receptacle, like the bulb receptacle a 75 watt or 100 watt regular light bulb screws into and they look like the new energy efficient bulbs everybody's talking about these days that replaces the regular incandescent bulbs. Your tank has the "tube" kind of fitting and SHO bulbs wont work in it. Hair grass is very cool but takes much more light than what you have. I'll try to find a link for those SHO bulbs but give me a day or so as I'm expecting guests. These bulbs come, for a few more dollars, with a reflector that you could place on top of your small tank and it might fit OK. PS Just Google SHO compact aquarium light and you'll find them easy. I'm not good at making links easy. They're cheap and make sure you get the aluminum reflector that will make it easy to place on top of your tank. Good luck. With this you can grow most anything you want. By the way, tell what kind of fish you have. Plants need some kind of fertiliser, especially hair grass and higher light requiring plants. The fish may supply enough of their own fertiliser, so tell me what you have.

Well, right now I'm trying to get rid of ich so I lost one of my dwarf platies and my betta isn't looking good but maybe he'll pull through. But once I get through this and start back trying to upgrade the whole plant situation, I'll have a betta & 2 dwarf platies. Or if I do lose the betta, I may have 3 dwarf platies and no betta. Would I be able to put this on the outside of the aquarium? The reason I'm asking that is because I have an eclipse hood with the filteration in the hood so I can't really put it over the tank without getting new filteration which isn't an option right now.

The watts per gallon rule is variable. I 'm not a lighting expert and I've only recently been reading up on lights. If it's the SHO bulb you're referring to I was suggesting it for growing high light requiring plants like hair grass and Ricca. You may want to go on www.plantgeek.com forums if you want more expert opinions on growing plants. Are you treating ick with that blue medication? Remember to keep treating 3-4 days after you stop seeing spots on your fish. This is because the med cannot kill the ick when it is in it's "spots" form. It kills ick when it's in the free swimming part of it's life cycle. It helps to raise the water temperature too. Raising it to 85 - 90 degrees speeds up the ick life cycle thus speeding the time needed to kill it.