Live Plants vs Fake Plants

Also have the odd fake one for the hospital tank

 

ok, so what all of you are saying, is when you have fish that you cannot keep with plants, you have no plants at all in the tank?

personally i agree that fake plants look terrible, but what can you do? you cant put big rocks and ornaments in a tank with super fast fish like tinfoils and bala sharks, they'll hurt themselves on it.. so you have no other choice but to use silk or plastic plants..

or you have a bare tank, in which case they dont feel safe and they stress, so what do you do?

does anyone know if tinfoil barbs eat vallisneria?

 

So there is a "small" place in aquarium keeping for fake plants

I knew it would come out sometime!

 

With Silver Dollars & Oscars you dont have a choice.
Any update on the "Bathtub"

 

Jeeeeese... BIG TANK = BIG work

Finished all the plumbing Spray Bars / return pipes etc etc / bought return pump (submersible)

Also did a test fill (no Leaks) Yay

Will post on the tank section shortly -
I bet you wish you had kept it now?

 

excelant glad there is no leaks,
Yes I do,
but hey priorities. Got a deal were what ever I spend on a German shepherd puppy for Fiancé she will spend on my next tank

 

and YES I'm going to try get some good looking FAKE - yes FAKE plants as intial setup - then slowly bring in real ones....

I struggle with Real plants....

 

"Might as well put in fake fish and have a fake filter and fake substrate in a fake tank.... "
Dude , you completely forgot the most important thing: Fake water!
​

 

@Skaapietjie in some instances you have no choice but to use fake plants.

 

Ah so we back on the Fake plants story... apparently if you use fake plants you have no class, neva mind the fact that some people dont like the hassels with live plants some poeple cant afford to keep buying live plants...

@Skaapietjie: judging people cause they use fake plants is not fair, tell you what you come to my office with plants that will last a week in my Malawi tank, due to the eat of the plant and the unearthing the plants, and then we can talk till then keep your personal insults about what people using in there tanks to yourself. Newbeies might not have a choice or might not know anything about thier tanks let alone plants and correct care for them.

 

wow guys.. calm down..

 

Sorry ok I will keep my coments to myself, personly as a begginer I think the fakes are a better option, think about it your new to the tank now you need to try and figure out why your fish are dieing and why your plants are dieing?

 

I don’t want to get in the middle of this, but I kinda agree with Lizid, I started off with Blackmore’s, and my small tank was full of fakkies, and then I went for some live plants, and they all turned brown,,,and died,

I need to confess, that I was 4 bricks tall…

But then again, I think if you are going for the fakkies (according to the tank/fish setup), and you want your tank to look its best, prepare way in advance, and get the best looking plants. When people set up tanks with pink and what not colored plants, it just looks cheap. Fake plants are heavy expensive, but they last, and I would rather have a tank full of fake (but 99% real looking) plants, then to spend the time and money to buy plants, plant them, only to find them missing the next morning.

Vez

 

Let's bring some balance here:

99% of beginner aquarists will go the fake route to start off. The live plant route seems scary, and the really cheap fake plants seem like an affordable option. I have lots of fakes at home packed away. The more expensive fakes are obviously a better option, with many fake plants now starting to really look real. I've seen a tank at a LPS where they had real + fake in the tank together, and you couldn't tell the difference. They did this as a marketing tool to try sell the fakes.

HOWEVER, the benefits of having real plants far outway the fake ones. 99% of beginners with fake plants often land up with problems with algae problems, and Nitrate problems too. Mostly because there is nothing in the tank that is absorbing the nutrients and nitrates, (which real plants need) and thus algae can bloom. So I always recommend new members to consider going for a few easy to grow plants just to assist with this problem.

ON A FINAL NOTE... there are some set ups where a real plant is just NOT PRACTICAL. Many people set up biotopes (Malawi for example) where the fish will eat the plants. The dead decaying plant matter that is left over is more detrimental to the fish than if they didn't have real plants at all. In this circumstance, your imagination needs to set up the scaping. It is actually very easy to set up a nice planted tank that looks good. If you can't have plants, but still have a stunning looking tank, then I take my hat off to you. I could not imagine any of my tanks without plants... but then other people could not imagine their tank without Malawi's. You need to decide.

 

what ive seen in many setups is in the sump, they change one of the partitions of the sump into a full on planted tank!! lights and normal substrate.. it looks cool and it helps with the nitrates! some guys even have some cool fish in the sump that would otherwise be torn up with the other chiclids and fish above

 

you always have a choice, you can choose to have no plants, you can create a nice tank with just wood and stones and so on, there is no rule that a fish tank should have a plant, fake or real.