Requesting Plant Suggestions

[jaywings19]

Hi There. I recently changed my 72G (US) tank setup in preparation for a planted aquarium. I swapped out the regular black gravel with Eco Complete substrate. I also got myself a CO2 system and increased my lighting to the medium-high range. The temperature is around 78-79F. I'll be using Seachem Flourish for liquid nutrient feeding.

Pretty sure I am at the point where I'm ready to go purchase plants. However, I need to know what specific plants would be best for kicking off a planted aquarium. I realize that "fast growing" ones are best initially to compete with the algae for nutrients.

What specific plants are the best/easiest for my tank initially?

How many different kinds of plants would be good to start with?

Any help and suggestions are appreciated. Thanks.

 

[DevUK]

Some fast growing stem plants will be good in the first instance. Hygrophila Polysperma and Rotala Rotundiflora are two good starters. Hopefully they will grow fast and out-compete any potential algae. What you can then do is replace them gradually with other, slower growing plants when your tank is more established. You want to head for something crazy like 70 - 80% substrate cover initially from what I've been told.

 

[jimbooo]

i second that, also water sprite (ceratop...something, sorry my latin isn't up to scratch!) is an attractive plant and grows super quickly. hornwort is another, not so pretty option but will do the job.

 

[jaywings19]

Thanks for the suggestions so far. Unfortunately, the LFS in my area don't have a great selection of plants (I'm in the USA).

I was looking at Live Aquaria and they have several plant packages.

Would this type of plant assortment work for starting up my tank?

LINK

I see that this package has several of the ones you mentioned.

I have a 72g US tank... so I might opt for the 100g assortment to make sure that my tank is densely populated.

Any thoughts on this package?

I believe the Java Fern is the only one with special planting care (attach to wood/rock), correct? All of the others can go right into the substrate?