Unwanted company with plants grown out of an aquarium…

I have a literal jungle growing out of my biggest group of tanks, and one of the problems with experimenting, is you find some things that don’t work for various reasons… it’s just personal, but I don’t want to add anything to my fish tanks, that isn’t beneficial to the fish, so they are solely responsible for fertilization… which limits quite a bit, what will thrive in my tanks… this last summer, I had to do some major changes to a few varieties of plants, as they got bugs… ( little flyers) some plants got them, while some touching them did not… so the ones that got bugs were rotated out… surprisingly, Chinese Evergreen, got bugs… it seemed to thrive in the hang on pots, with how I do my plants, while the Peace Lilies, which also thrive, didn’t have a bug on them… the Chinese Evergreen, got thrown out… and I probably had a dozen of them, as they were doing well, before they got bugs…

One of the problems, is how to get rid of the bugs, from around the aquariums??? You can’t really spray them with anything…

I tried a pair of those new Zevo bug catchers, that use a small blue colored LED light, to attract bugs to a small sticky board… they worked like magic to the small flyers, those, and getting rid of the plants that were susceptible to the bugs, and my jungle is now bug free… they do emit a small amount of blue light… my tanks, before the lit backgrounds start to light up in the morning ( remember the camera grabs more light than the eye, so this is dark enough, it’s not disrupting anyone’s sleep )

You get all the usual house plant issues with emergent plants. I'm no house plant expert, and other than a few plants roots in tanks, had none til I moved here 3 years ago. One of my daughters got me into them, and I've learned fish have nothing on plants when it comes to problems. I have all my tanks in an outbuilding, which has helped. They have been hit with aphids, spider webs (but not spider mites) and thrips. For some bizarre reason, the room (and house) filled with ladybugs before the freeze. I kicked them out of the house, but left them in the fishroom, and they have awakened and started being discreet predators. You couldn't have that in bedroom tanks.

I spend more time dealing with plant health than fish health, by far.

I look at them, as a natural progression to the hobby… the right ones make good filters, a natural habitat in the tanks… they make use of the light, that the aquarium doesn’t use, and in the case of my South American tetra tank, provide a natural jungle type shade to the lighting in the tank… in my case, the biggest group of tanks are built in, and the actual green part of the plants are really only visible in the work area… in my Barb tank ( not in the main group ) the plants are being encouraged to grow out, into the room, and the 250 gallon ( going in the living room upstairs ) will be like the Barb tank, and will be the basis for another jungle, where the plants will all be visible… we currently house the bulk of our houseplants, in the living room, next to where the big tank is going, there is an east facing patio door, where the houseplants are currently… the big tank is going in a nook, close to the patio door, so I’m hoping to incorporate the tanks plants, in with our current houseplants

My black friday purchase was some plant lights I set up above some tanks. They were cheap and it's to see what they do. The winter sun means a lot of my plants, in and out of tanks, limp through to better days. I figured I'd try a workaround there.

I did the same, in a bay window, in the kitchen, where Mrs has some herbs growing… it’s on the south side, so it get plenty of light, just not the hours they need for vegetive growth, they all have wanted to flower, with the shorter hours of daylight, during the winter, so I put one of the lights I use for around my tanks down stairs, in the bay window, to run 4 hours after dark… it’s made a big difference

Could be fungus gnats, they're a bane of many peoples existence with plants. Could be time to set up some carnivorous plants around your tanks (not in the water though, most cannot be in nutrient rich settings).

These are especially good to keep around for the annoying little houseplant bugs


I keep sundew in our kitchen because summer fruit flies lol plus they're neat plants

When I was setting up to get my first tank I made a list of dos and never dos. One thing I had on the never do lkist was live plants. Yjasy was until I was educated as to the benefits of having live plants in a tank. The main reason for this is that they benefit the fish in multiple ways:
break up sight lines. clean the water, feed some of the fish, provide hiding places for fry and they look nice too. So I began the trip into the world of live palnts.

Mow here it the thing about plants, they have nutritonal needs just like the fish We have no qualms about feeding our fish food they would never eat naturally. So why can one have a priblem with providing the plants with the nutritons they need? Most of this is what they use in the wild although it is not dosed and some of the things are in somewhat different forms. A perfect example is ammonia. Most plants prefer this as the way to obtain nitrogen. The plants want the ammonium form whoile the bacteria want the ammonia form. Inwater most of the total ammonia is in the form of ammonium. If we have fish etc, in a tank we cannot add ammonia to it.

This is why the ferts we use in out tanks pretty much do not contain ammonia. They rely mostly on nitrate in some form or another form like urea.

At my peak I had 13 planted tanks one of which used pressurized CO2. Since very early on I did two things for plants. The first was to being using Tropica fertilizers in the water (substrate ferts are another story). Not long after I began using Flourish Excel and I now what it is. But, having added it to my planted tanks for over 2 decades, I can say I have never seen it cause problems for any of my fish when dosed properly. I never use it as an algaecide. My big clown loaches have lived with it now for over 20 years.

So while I respect Magnum's right to hold the opinion he does, I could not disagree more. Why keep plants and then deprive them of what they need to thrive and which will not harm fish. The ferts I feed my plants are basically what they use ion nature and in similar concentrations.

But then there is a bit of common sense we can use. Search the literature from plain old fish forums to scietific papers. Find something that indicated fertilizing aquatic plants properly is a danger to fish? Worried about nitrate, plants will use it. Worried about ammonia in the water, plants will use it. Worried about fish fighting or fry being eaten, thriving plants will elp with that. Have life issues which are preventing you from doing your weekly maint. on tanks? The ones with plants can stand this a lot ologer than those tanks without them could.

So, based on my experience of having plant4d tanks and adding fertilizers for over 20 years. I do not believe proper fertilaztion of the plants in one's tanks can possible be bad for any fish that normally come from a planted environment. Consider the picture below. It is from my high tech planted, CO2 added and well fertilized tank.


And then this pic from my planted 45 gal. in which I added Excel weekly.


So, what I do know is that neither the regular proper fertilization and added Excel appear to have had negative effects on anything in my tanks and I will continue using them until I no longer have tanks or I find an even better alternative.

One last note- I do not do plants which grow out of the water. The few which have tried get pruned. So I do not have a bug problem as described in the earlier posts.

Of course, this is just my opinion and, as always, I could be wrong.