Live plants for betta tanks.

LiquidChaos66

Hey everyone! I have a 5 gallon tank which is perfect for my needs. I have a single betta and several snails and NOTHING else. lol What im looking for is advice for a nice small live plant for the tank. The fake plants kept getting nasty and were ugly in general. My current base in the tank is a standard Tetra gravel. Do I need to change my base layer? What would you recommend? Also as for a plant... what have you had experience with? I think the plant will brighten up my fish's behavior as he seems a tad depressed. Help?

WaterNerd

I have a small 29-gallon community fish tank at home. I have Anacharis plants in it and they are very easy to care for and look great in the tank.

Link to more info

Yakster

My daughter just got something like this aquaponic fish tank from the thrift store and is having good luck growing basil in the lid... doesn't do much for the fish, though.  My Wife's a bit nonplussed that the clippings from her basil plant are doing better than her mother plant downstairs.

WaterNerd

I've had mine set-up for almost a year. Betta loves it. Currently, have strawberry plants in it with some wheat grass

johnnyB

I used to like to have duckweed in my betta tanks.
It's a topwater plant that my betta seemed to like. Also if you go to your pet store and get some plants that are in the little black baskets,you can drop them right in. The roots will be fine in the baskets.

LiquidChaos66

WaterNerd said:

I have a small 29-gallon community fish tank at home. I have Anacharis plants in it and they are very easy to care for and look great in the tank.

Link to more info

I will look into those plants. they seem simple enough and easy to work with.

LiquidChaos66

johnnyB said:

I used to like to have duckweed in my betta tanks.
It's a topwater plant that my betta seemed to like. Also if you go to your pet store and get some plants that are in the little black baskets,you can drop them right in. The roots will be fine in the baskets.

I like the idea of a topwater plant. If I  find duckweed ill give it a run.

NorthsideSmoke

The problem when you start adding plants is you then need to take care of the lighting, since beta tanks really do not have a lot of filtration going on that will probably mean an algae outbreak. 

But I was always a fan of the anubias, but since my freshwater back in the day had been set up as a plant tank I don't remember the care requirements.  

LiquidChaos66

My tank currently has filter/light block in the top of the tank and I can easily move my tank further into daylight or further out depending on the algae issue. so far my 2 snails have been keeping the algae growth down to a minimum (not including the gunk in the gravel that I vacuum out). as of right now the system is pretty well balanced.

LiquidChaos66

So I ended up getting a few low light Java Ferns and an Anubias Nana. Planted them this last sunday and so far they seem to be doing fairly well.

LiquidChaos66

LiquidChaos66

I put in some new cycled substrate before planting them. but as you can see in the pic.... planting them stirred up some of the substrate and made it all a little 'dusty'.... buts its all gone now. lol

Also... trying to locate some Duckweed in my area.