Live Aquarium Plants Versus Plastic or Silk Plants

You have a lot of decisions to make as you set up your aquarium, and one of the bigger ones is whether to buy live plants or plastic ones to decorate your aquarium with.

The short answer here is: buy plastic plants if you are new to keeping a fish tank or if you want to keep your fish tank maintenance to a minimum. Get live plants if you want to create a true biotope environment, or if you are a bit of a gardener.

About Fake Plants - Plastic and Silk

I use the term "plastic" for fake plants, but the better-quality and newer fake plants available now are usually silk plants. The marketing copy for these aquarium decorations swears that "not even nature herself could tell the difference" between these new silk plants and real live plants. I think the person who wrote that copy has drunk way too much corporate koolaid, but that's not the point here.

The point is that if you spend $8 to $12 getting one of these really nice silk plants, you will be able to look into your set up aquarium and be pleased. The silk plants move in the water currents much more realistically than the thick old plastic ones used to. The new silk plants also come in dozens if not hundreds of designs that are nearly identical to real plants from real biotopes across the world. So if you want to buy silk plants that would "recreate" an Amazon rainforest biotope, for example, you can do that. If you want to buy silk plants that recreate a brackish habitat, you can do that too.

About Live Plants

I will always prefer live plants, so you should know I have a natural bias toward them. Even my humble little 5 gallon betta fish setup has a live Amazon sword plant that I bought at a local Petco. That said, live plants are a pain. They are messy, because leaves die and fall off, so they make for more water changes. They also seem to attract and grow more algae (this is probably because they need light, and both algae and plants grow in light), so there is more algae cleaning to be done. They also need to be trimmed to get rid of the dead leaves, if you want the tank to look good. Live plants also need good light, and so if you are not putting your aquarium in a sunlit window (which your betta might not care for, though other fish like direct sun), you will have to pay for extremely expensive aquarium lighting. Live plants will also begin to turn yellow or start dying on you if they do not get enough light or enough minerals. Sometimes it can feel like the plants take as much care as the fish.

If you want live plants, the first thing you have to be sure you have is good light. Even Amazon swords and java ferns, which are sold because they can survive (just barely) in the dark conditions of most aquariums, need at least 1 watt of light per gallon. Ie, if you have a ten gallon tank, you need 10 watts of light to keep that plant alive. Medium light plants need 2 watts per gallon, and high light plants need three or more watts per gallon. Most of the really interesting plants, (and most of the plants, period) need high light. So, again, either put your tank in strong natural light (and buy a bunch of algae eaters), or set aside a couple of hundred dollars for you aquarium lighting.

All that whining aside, if you really love plants, having a tank of healthy live plants will make your heart sing. For about a year I maintained a 75 gallon planted discus tank that was a joy to behold. It was fanastic, especially during the cold, grey winter months. But after about a year I got really sick of spending 2-3 hours a week maintaining that tank.

In case you were wondering, live plants for a real betta fish biotope (plants that would be found in ditches, rice paddies and ponds in Thailand and Southeast Asia) would include nitella, water lilies, giant hygrophila, limnocharis, hydrilla, cryptocoryne ciliata and pistia stratiotes. You can get live hygrophila and cryptocoryne ciliata from my favorite live plant grower, Arizona Aquatic Gardens. I have bought both pond and aquarium plants from them and always been delighted.

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