Do faster growing plants "clean" water better than slow growing plants?

[MammaBearinTN]

I hope that question makes sense?

In other words, how effective is slower growing anubias compared to other faster growing plants?

Thanks!

 

[Chickenboi]

I think they do because they grow faster so they absorb the nutrients in the water faster.

 

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

Yes.

The faster growing plants suck up the ammonia much faster, and use it to put out new growth and new plants, which are then also sucking up ammonia as well, as you see from all the new growth some fast growing plants like hornwort, anacharis, guppy grass and other fast growing stem plants put out. Floating plants like duckweed, frogbit, salvinia etc are also fantastic ammonia suckers, since they produce so many new plants so quickly. Most of us with floating plants wind up having to throw handfuls of the stuff away on a regular basis, otherwise it would completely coat the surface of the water, it grows so fast.

Slow growing plants like anubius, java fern, the mosses etc have their place! They're easy plants for beginners, undemanding in terms of lighting and nutrients, since they prefer to be shaded, and aren't putting out lots of new growth rapidly (usually), so they're not requiring high lighting, CO2 or ferts to survive the way some more delicate and difficult plants do. The slow growing rhizome plants like that are also great because they can be attached to hardscape, still provide cover and habitat for the fish, and contribute to water quality - just not as much or as fast as the fast growing stem plants or floating plants.

Those fast growing stem and floating plants I listed above are also pretty undemanding, not requiring special lights, ferts, CO2 or delicate handling, so they're easy for beginners too, but do a lot more in terms of water quality and helping cycle a tank or handle a crisis in water quality than the slow growing plants do. A mixture of both types is nice to have!

 

[jaylach]

Ya, all the plant talk is fine but the main concern is to have a healthy tank. If your tank is in good shape as to water conditions you can add just about any 'beginner' plant that you want.

 

[sharkweek178]

Yes.

The faster growing plants suck up the ammonia much faster, and use it to put out new growth and new plants, which are then also sucking up ammonia as well, as you see from all the new growth some fast growing plants like hornwort, anacharis, guppy grass and other fast growing stem plants put out. Floating plants like duckweed, frogbit, salvinia etc are also fantastic ammonia suckers, since they produce so many new plants so quickly. Most of us with floating plants wind up having to throw handfuls of the stuff away on a regular basis, otherwise it would completely coat the surface of the water, it grows so fast.

Slow growing plants like anubius, java fern, the mosses etc have their place! They're easy plants for beginners, undemanding in terms of lighting and nutrients, since they prefer to be shaded, and aren't putting out lots of new growth rapidly (usually), so they're not requiring high lighting, CO2 or ferts to survive the way some more delicate and difficult plants do. The slow growing rhizome plants like that are also great because they can be attached to hardscape, still provide cover and habitat for the fish, and contribute to water quality - just not as much or as fast as the fast growing stem plants or floating plants.

Those fast growing stem and floating plants I listed above are also pretty undemanding, not requiring special lights, ferts, CO2 or delicate handling, so they're easy for beginners too, but do a lot more in terms of water quality and helping cycle a tank or handle a crisis in water quality than the slow growing plants do. A mixture of both types is nice to have!

When people get rid of aquarium plants, they should be careful how they do it. Don't let it end up in a local body of water because many of these plants are invasive species. You can't even own some species in some states for that reason.

 

[Essjay]

In summer my excess plants go in the green recycling. By the time they've been composted there's no danger.
In winter, when there are no green recycling collections, they go in the rubbish bin. Our rubbish is incinerated, so again no danger.



My red root floater grows so well I have to throw handfuls away every week or two.

 

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

When people get rid of aquarium plants, they should be careful how they do it. Don't let it end up in a local body of water because many of these plants are invasive species. You can't even own some species in some states for that reason.

Very true! Certain plants, fish and animals are banned for trade in Europe for the same reason. We've only recently been able to buy apple (mystery) snails here in the UK after they were banned for trade in 2012 for similar reasons, and water lettuce came close to being bannned from sale.

Nothing from a tank - fish, plant, snails, shrimp, crawfish etc should ever be released into the wild. People have done a lot of damage with goldfish, plecos, crawfish and many more species being dumped by aquarium owners into the wild, in places they don't belong, and the damage they can do is shocking. I usually share this video as an example, it's short, and well worth seeing!

I've given away excess plant trimmings to local hobbyists before, but things like my frogbit and hornwort grow so fast I'd never be able to find enough people who want it! lol. So when I say I end up throwing away handfuls, that means throwing away in the bin, general waste, which is incinerated here too. No danger to local waterways.

 

[sharkweek178]

Very true! Certain plants, fish and animals are banned for trade in Europe for the same reason. We've only recently been able to buy apple (mystery) snails here in the UK after they were banned for trade in 2012 for similar reasons, and water lettuce came close to being bannned from sale.

Nothing from a tank - fish, plant, snails, shrimp, crawfish etc should ever be released into the wild. People have done a lot of damage with goldfish, plecos, crawfish and many more species being dumped by aquarium owners into the wild, in places they don't belong, and the damage they can do is shocking. I usually share this video as an example, it's short, and well worth seeing!

I've given away excess plant trimmings to local hobbyists before, but things like my frogbit and hornwort grow so fast I'd never be able to find enough people who want it! lol. So when I say I end up throwing away handfuls, that means throwing away in the bin, general waste, which is incinerated here too. No danger to local waterways.

People don't know how much damage they risk doing by introducing foreign animals or plants into an ecosystem.

 

[sharkweek178]

Yes.

The faster growing plants suck up the ammonia much faster, and use it to put out new growth and new plants, which are then also sucking up ammonia as well, as you see from all the new growth some fast growing plants like hornwort, anacharis, guppy grass and other fast growing stem plants put out. Floating plants like duckweed, frogbit, salvinia etc are also fantastic ammonia suckers, since they produce so many new plants so quickly. Most of us with floating plants wind up having to throw handfuls of the stuff away on a regular basis, otherwise it would completely coat the surface of the water, it grows so fast.

Slow growing plants like anubius, java fern, the mosses etc have their place! They're easy plants for beginners, undemanding in terms of lighting and nutrients, since they prefer to be shaded, and aren't putting out lots of new growth rapidly (usually), so they're not requiring high lighting, CO2 or ferts to survive the way some more delicate and difficult plants do. The slow growing rhizome plants like that are also great because they can be attached to hardscape, still provide cover and habitat for the fish, and contribute to water quality - just not as much or as fast as the fast growing stem plants or floating plants.

Those fast growing stem and floating plants I listed above are also pretty undemanding, not requiring special lights, ferts, CO2 or delicate handling, so they're easy for beginners too, but do a lot more in terms of water quality and helping cycle a tank or handle a crisis in water quality than the slow growing plants do. A mixture of both types is nice to have!

Question. If I'm starting a tank and doing a silent cycle, how many floating plants would I need? Can I just buy a few and let them propogate on their own? Or if I want to be able to put fish in sooner than later, should I get more?

 

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

People don't know how much damage they risk doing by introducing foreign animals or plants into an ecosystem.

A lot of them don't realise, yes. Some just don't care. They bought some cute little goldfish that outgrew the five gallon tank, don't want to buy a massive tank for their kid's impulse buy pet, so they convince Timmy that Spongebob and Squarepants will be much happier living in this big lake, and release them. Or they have a huge common pleco they can't rehome and don't want to do the responsible thing and euthanise it, so they dump it in their local lake, reasoning to themselves that it's only one fish, it won't matter or make a difference, but that their "doing the right thing" by letting it go live in the wild.

Their pleco joins the others that have been dumped there, since the store sold a bunch of those common plecos to local people and they all outgrew their tanks, they breed, they outcompete native fish and damage the habitat etc. People can justify all kinds of things to themselves.
Even in the cases of people keeping native fish to their area, there are different pathogens that can be spread between the hobby fish they kept with the native fish, and can cause massive problems to native fish that haven't been exposed to that pathogen before. So don't release fish even into their native habitat if you've chosen to keep them in the hobby.

Question. If I'm starting a tank and doing a silent cycle, how many floating plants would I need? Can I just buy a few and let them propogate on their own? Or if I want to be able to put fish in sooner than later, should I get more?

I'm not a great help there, I'm afraid, I've only done seeded cycles since I've always had an established and healthy tank I could pinch some media and substrate from, then naturally added a lot of live plants just because I like them.
There's a thread here though about silent cycling, hopefully that can help you more than I can!

How heavily planted would you want it to be in the end though? Do you have a final scape idea in mind and an idea of what you plan to stock with? One of my tanks had a sort of gloomy, sunken forest theme, so I got a lot of peacock moss and slow growing plants like bolbitis, java fern, anubius etc, and a few others like crypts that help a bit, but aren't as fast growing as some of the typical, easy fast growing stems. So I added a dense bunch of hornwort to float at the top, so it could help with cycling and stablishing the tank as it got established and balanced, but could be easily removed and wasn't a part of the final scape design. Hornwort etc aren't expensive and grow very fast, so getting a few bunches that all start growing is really helpful, and again, as are floating plants.

I'm a huge advocate for floating plants now. Not just for the look or the help with cycling, but I truly believe after watching fish with and without them, and how they will dart underneath them if a shadow passes above, that it helps them feel much safer than being in an open topped box of water. There are sheltering patches of aquatic plants and riparian plants most everywhere in the wild, and fish are very vulnerable to predators from above like birds that fish, and they have no idea that there won't be any predation in captivity.

 

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

Question. If I'm starting a tank and doing a silent cycle, how many floating plants would I need? Can I just buy a few and let them propogate on their own? Or if I want to be able to put fish in sooner than later, should I get more?

I realised I didn't really answer your question - in terms of floating plants, one small pot of in-vitro Amazon frogbit was enough for me to have frogbit in every tank, eventually. Took a few weeks to have like, the surface in a 15g tank covered and begin removing excess plants to another tank. So don't waste your money buying several tubs/batches of a floating plant like frogbit/salvinia/water lettuce/duckweed, to try to rush the process, one pot/batch will eventually give you more than you need. I tend to stick to one type of floating plant per tank, ideally, since one type might out-compete another, and look a bit messy.
Save the cash you would have spent on multiples of the same floating plant, and use to buy a variety of other plants!

How many fast-growing stem plants you need to get the tank cycled will depend on the size of the tank and the bioload of what you intend to stock really, and how patient you are.

Personally, as a general rule, I'd get one type and pot of a floating plant, and at least two other fast growing stem plants that can be either planted, or left alone to float and do their thing like hornwort/anacharis/water wysteria/water sprite/guppy grass, mainly to use for the purpose of cycling it faster. I don't like the look of most of those plants, to be honest! But I'll use them and fully agree how great they are for what they do, absolutely.
Then below all of them, I'd plant the things I really want, for the look of the tank I have in mind, whether that's amazon swords, crypts, anubius, mosses, vallis etc. Those sorts of plants aren't as fast growing and can take a while to get themselves established and growing well. So the floating and fast-growing stem plants can do the heavy lifting of processing the fish waste, while the pretty aquascape plants get their roots in and start to grow properly.

 

[jaylach]

Of course this is just my personal opinion and about plants in general rather than just floaters but...

Look at the general height the plants will achieve. For instance a sword is going to grow taller than an Anubias. Place the tallest plants to the back of the tank, medium height in the middle and the shortest toward the front. This gives a sense of depth and will actually make the tank appear larger.

I could be wrong but I would think that broad leaf plants would likely handle more ammonia than what I call hair leaf plants like some crypts. This is really just a guess made due to the broad leaf plants having more surface area.

Unless you have a good local source for plants I would recommend https://wetplants.com . Good quality plants that arrive pretty mature rather than just sprouts. On the downside you can expect to probably get some bladder snails hitching a ride on the plants. I know that I got some snails but they were gone as soon as I added my cichlids which seem to like escargot. Within a few days I had no snails. To give an idea as to how mature the received plants are the ones in the following image were gotten about 2.5 months ago.

 

[StevenF]

Yes Plant growth does clean the water but the key word here is growth. If there is no growth the plant will not clean the water or produce oxygen for the fish.. If a plant is not growing it can look OK for weeks or months. The biggest reason for plants not growing is insufficient level ates of one or more nutrient plants need.

My observations is that slow growing plant are more resistant to low nutrient levels while fast growers are less resistant. As a result fast growers tend to show problems before the slow growers.

Question. If I'm starting a tank and doing a silent cycle, how many floating plants would I need? Can I just buy a few and let them propogate on their own? Or if I want to be able to put fish in sooner than later, should I get more?

If you want to do a silent cycle verify you can maintain plant growth for at least 3 weeks before you buy any fish. And when the plants look health are are growing new leaves and not loosing old leaves you can add fish slowly. a few a week. If every thing goes well the plants grow and spread increasing theie nutrient consumption to keep up iwht the fish.

The big issue you need to be aware of is that often a new tank with plants will do well for a while and then growth slows or stops due to a nutrient deficiency. Often a new substrate will have a small amount of nutrients initially the plant will grow. Then the nutrients run out and plant growth stop. And it might be hard to identify the problem and get the plants to grow again.

 

[sharkweek178]

Yes Plant growth does clean the water but the key word here is growth. If there is no growth the plant will not clean the water or produce oxygen for the fish.. If a plant is not growing it can look OK for weeks or months. The biggest reason for plants not growing is insufficient level ates of one or more nutrient plants need.

My observations is that slow growing plant are more resistant to low nutrient levels while fast growers are less resistant. As a result fast growers tend to show problems before the slow growers.


If you want to do a silent cycle verify you can maintain plant growth for at least 3 weeks before you buy any fish. And when the plants look health are are growing new leaves and not loosing old leaves you can add fish slowly. a few a week. If every thing goes well the plants grow and spread increasing theie nutrient consumption to keep up iwht the fish.

The big issue you need to be aware of is that often a new tank with plants will do well for a while and then growth slows or stops due to a nutrient deficiency. Often a new substrate will have a small amount of nutrients initially the plant will grow. Then the nutrients run out and plant growth stop. And it might be hard to identify the problem and get the plants to grow again.

I have root tabs to keep the nutrients going in the substrate.

 

[sharkweek178]

How heavily planted would you want it to be in the end though? Do you have a final scape idea in mind and an idea of what you plan to stock with? One of my tanks had a sort of gloomy, sunken forest theme, so I got a lot of peacock moss and slow growing plants like bolbitis, java fern, anubius etc, and a few others like crypts that help a bit, but aren't as fast growing as some of the typical, easy fast growing stems. So I added a dense bunch of hornwort to float at the top, so it could help with cycling and stablishing the tank as it got established and balanced, but could be easily removed and wasn't a part of the final scape design. Hornwort etc aren't expensive and grow very fast, so getting a few bunches that all start growing is really helpful, and again, as are floating plants.

I'm a huge advocate for floating plants now. Not just for the look or the help with cycling, but I truly believe after watching fish with and without them, and how they will dart underneath them if a shadow passes above, that it helps them feel much safer than being in an open topped box of water. There are sheltering patches of aquatic plants and riparian plants most everywhere in the wild, and fish are very vulnerable to predators from above like birds that fish, and they have no idea that there won't be any predation in captivity.

I have a pretty good idea of what I'm going to do. A back row of water wisteria and maybe some valisneria in the corner. In front of that; Brazilian pennywort, bacopa monieri, anubias, java fern, planted anacharis and crypt for looks. I'm going to float some frogbit, spangles and wisteria. I know you recommended only one kind of floating plant. But I want some of the tank to have those long frogbit roots but not the entire tank. I still want to have a lot of floaters to process the ammonia. The frogbit will be at the end of the tank furthest from the bubbler because I read that if the tops are wet, they can rot so I don't want them getting splashed on. The spangles and wisteria will fill out the rest.