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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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