Live plants can be frustrating. In the first aquarium I researched and set up myself I kept ghost shrimp, zebra danios, and my first live plants. The stems died quickly, turning my tank into a murky brown pond of floating detritus. However, keeping a planted tank needn’t be frustrating or intimidating.  There are three main needs every plant has. If you understand these before bringing home your green friends you will have a far better experience with them.

Lighting

Lighting is critical for plants. In the great outdoors plants have access to the world’s greatest light: the sun. This is the key to their success. Thanks to the process of photosynthesis plants can turn light into more plant. Not all light is created equally, however. Light is a spectrum of wavelengths. Artificial lights produce a variety of wavelengths and different plants can access different wavelengths, so some lights are better for plant growth than others. The easiest plants usually do well with low light and more difficult plants often require high lighting, but all plants require lighting of some sort.

Fertilizer

Many aquatic plants differ from terrestrial plants in their ability to take in nutrients from the water column. Most stem and essentially all floating aquatic plants will readily absorb nutrition from the water rather than the soil. Most also take up plant food in the traditional root manner. This means that there are two options for providing your plants the nutrients they need to grow healthily. Liquid fertilizers can be added directly to the tank water while root tabs and soil supplements must be inserted into the substrate. The easiest plants tend to need little fertilizer beyond the waste their animal roommates produce. The more difficult species generally need supplements like iron.

Carbon Dioxide

As part of photosynthesis plants take CO2 in and put oxygen out. The more CO2 a plant has access to, the better it will grow. This can be a tricky aspect to supply to aquaria because CO2 is potentially dangerous to animals. Most plants will do well with the CO2 available in the tank already, and the more advanced level species will grow little without supplemental CO2.

What Plants Are Right For Me?

There are far too many plant species to list out here. To make the decision easier,  aquascapers and general aquarists usually place species into two categories: high tech and low tech. High tech plants need high lighting, comprehensive and regular fertilizing, and CO2 injection. Low tech plants do well with low lighting, minimal fertilizers, and no CO2 injection.  This is the group of plants that beginners should start with.