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Plants that survived my goldfish (and some that didn't)
or
More salad, please!


I wanted goldfish, because I wanted to have some long-lived pet fish.  I wanted a tank with live plants, because I'd had plastic plants in the past, before moving up to live plants, and there was no comparison.   So I studied....and learned that goldfish eat many kinds of aquatic plants, and in their incessant search for food they may uproot others.  Yikes.  And the cooler temperatures of unheated goldfish aquaria were supposed to limit the plant selection compared to a warm tropical tank.

I looked through web sites and books about goldfish and aquatic plants, and concluded that there were a few things that should work with the goldies.  In the end, I gave up on a lot of the expert opinions, and made many sacrificial offerings to the goldies.  I would try a plant first in another tank, and if it prospered, try another or a cutting of the same type with the goldfish. 

In my goldfish tank (29G tank with two fat, spoiled, and quite large goldfish, 73W flourescent lighting on 10hrs/day, compressed CO2, soft water neutral pH, and temps (despite lack of heater) ranging from mid70s winter to mid80s summers, with snails)--

These plants prosper:

Anubias nana & barteri--older leaves do grow algae, but regular new leaves & occasional blooms
Crinum thaianum (water onion)
Cryptocornye Wendetti, bronze
Cryptocoryne Ciliata
Cryptocoryne Willisi
Hygrophila corymbosa angustifolia (willow hygro)
Microsorium pteropus (java fern, narrow leaf, regular, and wendelov varieties)--older leaves do grow algae

Things that do well for a while but not long-term:

Cabomba caroliniana--shredded and pulled up
Cryptocoryne retrospiralis--broken stalks, pulled up
Cryptocoryne crispatula--didn't recover after "melting"
Echinodorus tenellus--easily pulled up by shallow roots & runners
Echinodorus (plain amazon sword)--nibbled to the nubbins but keeps putting out new little leaves, refuses to die completely, long roots keep it barely attached to gravel
Egeria densa (aka anacharis, elodea, etc)--some eaten, some broken, and the rest pulled up
Nymphaea daubenyana--uproot or break off leaves
Nymphoides aquatica--uproot or break off leaves & tubers or rhizomes or whatever those are
Sagittaria platyphylla (giant) & subulata (dwarf)--pulled up by roots
Spathiophyllum tasson ("brazil sword")--not an aquatic plant, much happier after being planted in a pot outside the tank, where it has bloomed as a happy "peace lily" many times
Vallisneria sp. (tiger vals; jungle vals; spiral vals)--break leaves, dig up roots

Things they simply ate (salad!):

Alternathera ficoides--sold as "green hedge", it's not a true aquatic plant anyway
Bacopa monnieri
Duckweed--they love this so much I "harvest" it from other tanks and feed to them as a snack
Frogbit
Heteranthera zosterifolia
Hydrocotyle sibthorpioides (pennywort)
Hygrophila difformis (water wisteria)
Hygrophila polysperma (common hygro and tropic sunset variant)
Limnophila sessiflora (asian ambulia)
Lysimachia nummularia (pond penny)
Proserspinaus palustra (mermaid weed)

Things they don't really eat but shred nonetheless:

Ceratopteris thalictroides (water sprite)--gets shredded when floating (but I add more from my other tanks where it grows well, so keep some of this in there all the time)
Eleocharis montevidensis (hairgrass)--break leaves
Marsilea--shallow roots and runners make it easily to pull up
Myriophyllum sp.--break up leaves & stalks
Zosterella dubia--tear off leaves & break stalks

Things that survived but didn't do anything,  just grew algae:

Bolbitis heudelotii (aka african fern)
Crinum calamistratum (curly water onion)
Eleocharis acicularis (dwarf hairgrass)
Liliaeopsis (micro-chain sword)
Mayaca fluviatalis
Rotala sp.-- a thin-leaved rotala that would just barely grow new leaves ahead of thick algal growth


Things that just melted:

Ceratophyllum demersum (hornwort)--dissolved every summer in the heat
Lobelia cardinalis--not enough light
Rotala macarandra--not nearly enough light

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