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How do you choice your plant balance?

tayloss

Member
Joined
10 Sep 2017
Messages
135
Location
Fareham
HI All,

When designing an aquasape, how do you deciede what plant to use on the foreground/Middle/Background? If you are running high tech, what balance of fast/slow growing do you incorporate into the design?

Also, do you tend to have a balance of Easy/Medium and Hard type plants in the tank, or go for one advanced and more easy?

This is the one area I've always struggled with in the design aspect, but have learnt to not use slow growing Anbius plants too high up the wood! Even with floating plant, they suffer algae...

Interested to see from a sessioned aquascaper what process you use...

Thanks,
Chris
 
The first major parameter to recon with is light intensity... Most plants if supplied with ample CO² don't care much if it is high or medium light. Except the slow growing plants that are rather requiring shady conditions by nature e.g. Anubias, ferns and buce etc. Not saying these plant sp. can't grow in high light conditions, they do, but with a rather narrow error margine. Than if you cannot provide them a somewhat shaded spot in the scape you are at risk.

Than it all comes down to, knowing the plants.. Meaning, slow or fast growing, potential size in given conditions.. Take for example Echinodorus tenellus tenellus, this plant will grow significantly smaller in lower light intensities and no CO². Than depending on the dimension of the scape and given conditions this could rather be a midground than a foreground plant. Some stemplants can grow in different sizes from mid to background type. Some stemplants tend to lose lower leaves due to growth density and or light insufficiency, this are plants you definitively rather want as much as possible in the background, with a midground plant in front of it to cover the leavless stems at the back.

And all that again comes down to experience and this takes more than a few scapes. It is always ok to look online for inspiration i try to copy scapes you like. A pit fall in this is often the parameters may differ significantly. Most plants don't care much for these parameters and grow anyways but this can significantly cause different grow behaivor in size and speed. Here you could take for axample a valis, usualy described as a pant growing 30 to >60cm, Larger than 60 means it also can easily grow over 120cm in lenght.

Experience comes with a lot of trail and error.. Another example i experienced my self also in high tech situation, some plants i cannot grow for what ever reason. I have no idea why, but i always failed to grow Staurogyne repens, pogostemon helferi, Bolbitis hetroclita.. I tried a few times under different fert regimes and over again they always die on me.. Must be in my tapwater parameters i have no other explanation i dunno, it's what i get from the tap i can't change. Thus how hard i want, i probably will never shine with a scape filled with these plants.
Anther plant i cannot grow in low tech condition is Cryptocoryne spiralis var, shola, i love this plant to death and it always dies on me.

Search youtube for The Green Machine, James Findley made quite a few making of videos. Very inspirational to watch and in 90% of his scapes he finaly decided to swap some plants, because they just didn't grow the way he previously thought they would. And that's a professional scaper.
 
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Great question. Aside from many of the comments already made by Marcel above...

Personally I don't really pay much attention to how difficult or easy a plant is supposed to be to grow. I've had more failures with easy plants than those that are suppose to be hard to grow. In reality a lot depends on the health of the plants and individual tank parameters, and those can change as the tank matures. So early failures can turn in to later successes. Having some idea about growth rate and size is always helpful when positioning plants; mainly because it will require less gardening and maintenance work later on when the plants mature.

Usually I develop the hardscape first and then choose the plants to suit. Although, if I want to become proficient at growing a plant or perfecting an aquascaping style, say a lawn of HC for instance, I'll design the scape around that.
I also tend to buy the plants I like or want to try and grow. That's all part to the learning curve, which for me is a large part of the fun too. If I fail with a plant in one scape it doesn't stop me from trying it again in another, quite often persistence pays off.

As I get more experienced the one thing I find myself doing increasingly more often is putting ease of maintenance before anything else. In fact it's become my number 1 priority. I no longer have the inclination to work around the scape so much. The easier it is to maintain the more likely I am to keep up with it and the more likely I am to enjoy the scape. Just simple things like not placing wood or difficult to maintain plants up against the glass can make a big difference. Basically, I try and make life as easy as possible for myself.
 
Thanks for your answers, the reason i'm asking is i have a hit and miss approach to high tech tanks, where by I often get hit with BBA even tho the CO2/Ferts are max and the only thing left is the light intensity.. There are a couple of plants that require high light, but the others don't so they suffer from algae although this time, its hitting all plants! Think I'm going to experiment a bit more with fast growing plants and try to create a balance..

One of the the common trends I have see in a lot of videos is the long process to setup, but not how said person balances the tank, trims the plants in the initial month and what if any issues they have encountered... I wonder if this is some of the reasons why people try to copy (me included) but don't always have the experience to follow it through?

I'll give a small example.. a scape was setup to use one of the Tropica Manual CO2 systems, it was added, but it wasn't explained as to why this was used or how to use it... and I think that also go with plants... why use this one instead of this etc...

Would be nice to have a play tank I guess... :)

Thanks,
Chris
 
The simple answer to that is to keep the light intensity reasonably low until the plants have settled in and the tank becomes biologically mature. My filter is maxed out with highly porous media as well to cope with ammonia spikes and the organics given off during start up. Both will help limit BBA and other algae.
If you get your CO2 dialled in quickly and achieve optimal flow and distribution, the amount of light needed is often a lot less than folk imagine. My Twinstar S series is set at 60% for 6 hrs a day. My tank has been running for around 7 weeks with those settings.
Many plants described as high light are not so much light demanding as CO2 demanding, get that bit right and you can usually grow anything together, regardless of lighting requirements.
Many scapers also use LC in addition to CO2 as well, it acts as an algicide. I use the recommended dose. That and the Twinstar algae buster and good maintenance and house keeping all help, by degrees, to keep the plants growing and healthy.
 
Thanks for your answers, the reason i'm asking is i have a hit and miss approach to high tech tanks, where by I often get hit with BBA even tho the CO2/Ferts are max and the only thing left is the light intensity.. There are a couple of plants that require high light, but the others don't so they suffer from algae although this time, its hitting all plants! Think I'm going to experiment a bit more with fast growing plants and try to create a balance..

Hi
U are on the right path there.
I have been focusing on plant growth and tank balance last 3 years with the actual scaping left in background.
I have experienced in my low techs all sorts of algae dissapear in a week when I hit the sweet spot regarding balance of light and nutrients,oxigen levels,maintenance (cleaning) and plant mass.Even had my filter pipes clean themselves from the biofilm.And thats all without CO2 supplementation and one waterchange per week.The thing is that is very particular setup related and U need to discover the sweet spot for every tank U have for yourself .
Regards Konsa
 
Would be nice to have a play tank I guess...

Thats why I have a Pot scape, lets me try plants, see how they respond to trimming or replanting when they get tall. Gets a bit wild at times. Plus lets me get them growing well then stick them in other tank. I even have an area in my tank two small pots can fit straight in and you cant see the pots on viewing. easy to change plant or just lift pot out for trimming or replanting
 
I start with a long list of potential plants then narrow it down. This is my process (of elimination):

1. The plant should mimic what a landscape should look like. For example, pogostemon erectus is a plant I use to mimic pine forests. A lot also depends upon the shade of green because some valleys need to look like they are shaded on one side. I don't usually bother with anything fast growing or with big leaves because this would narrow the perspective.
2. Check the pH requirements.
3. Ask opinions for what people would like to see at home - because some plants are just pretty. We then rate them out of ten.

I don't have a process for determining how easy a plant is supposed to be, because as Marcel said, there is no real way to tell what you can and can't grow.
I always try to split in-vitro plants across different tanks so I can deduce any potential growing problems that are related to tank conditions.
When things don't grow, I get very interested, and I'll often continue trying until I get it right. Other times I reach a compromise and substitute plants (to great determent of the initial design). But I always remind myself that aquascapes are more interesting when they evolve.
 
What I decided to do to keep things simple, knowing that I have certain tap water parameters, certain livestock, certain lights, time and money, was to put in ALL the plants I like in one tank in a spot that would suit them (shade or direct light). Some grew, some died, some were shredded by amano shrimp, some were trimmed by gouramis, some by guppies.
Some plants died because their neighbors produced chemicals that inhibited growth.

I decided against:
Elodea(grows too fast)
Alternanthera amanos eat it/grows algae
Hairgrass - barely carpets
Micranthemum - dies and amanos eat it.
Java fern - leaves look super ugly for me while the plant is still young.
Had amazing success with
Ludwigia ruben
Rotala
Vallis
Regular montecarlo
Bacopa
Java moss
Anubias and bucephalandra (in shade or freefloating)
Frogbit
Floating fern
Tiger lily

On trial/ medium success:
Hairgrass
Staurogyne repens
Crypts

So i guess keep what oracticallp works for your setup and stop drooling after plants that just don't grow.
 
Hi all,
So i guess keep what oracticallp works for your setup and stop drooling after plants that just don't grow.
Same for me.

Plant (or just add) a bit of everything I have, and wait.

If I find a new plant I like the look of, and think it might be suitable, use the "three strikes and your out" method, three chances in differing conditions and if it isn't successful then I don't get it again.

cheers Darrel
 
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