LAYOUT vol.005

English version of this article originally published in
Tropical Fish Hobbyist Magazine.

How to plant aquatic plants

In previous articles, I mainly discussed how to build the substrate and the ways to arrange compositional materials, but I only briefly touched upon planting method. In this issue, I am going to explain in detail how to plant aquatic plants in Nature Aquarium.

Tweezers are needed to plant aquatic plants. Some of you might be using your hands to plant aquatic plants. If you are planting just a few aquatic plants, planting them with your hands works just fine. However, if you are planting stem plants densely, or a number of small aquatic plants in the foreground as in Nature Aquarium, it is difficult to plant them with hands no matter how dexterous you are. Therefore tweezers are used. Depending on the type and the size of aquatic plants and the location, different types of tweezers are used. Since tweezers specially made for aquatic plants are available in a variety of sizes and shapes nowadays, you can select those that are easy for you to work with. For planting thin stem plants or small foreground plants, fine tipped tweezers are good, whereas tweezers with a non-slip grip are easy to use for planting rosette type aquatic plants such as Cryptocoryne and Echinodorus.

Once you have your tools ready, it’s time to start a layout. As I explained in the past issues, substrate is laid first and the compositional materials such as rocks and driftwood are placed. The substrate for the layout introduced here is the most basic type, which is a combination of Power Sand and Aqua Soil Amazonia. Since the aquarium is W90 x D45 x H45 (cm) size, 6 liters of Power Sand are laid as the bottom layer and approximately 18 liters of Aqua Soil Amazonia are placed on top. After leveling the substrate surface with a Sand Flattener, powder type Aqua Soil Amazonia is spread thinly. The fine, uniform grains of the powder type Aqua Soil make it easy to plant small plants such as Glossostigma and encourage the root growth.

Once driftwood is arranged and rocks are placed around them, it is time to plant aquatic plants. There are a few important points for planting aquatic plants. The first one is to put water in the aquarium just enough to cover the substrate. Some of you may plant aquatic plants in the aquarium already filled with water to the top. With this method, even with a pair of tweezers, it is difficult to plant due to the buoyancy of the aquatic plants; the plants often slip out of the substrate. It is particularly difficult to plant large rosette type plants this way. It is also difficult to plant before putting water in the aquarium since the substrate material is dry and loose. Putting just enough water to cover the substrate makes it easy to plant since the substrate becomes firm yet there is no buoyancy to deal with. When putting water in the aquarium, water should be sprinkled lightly over the entire substrate first by letting a very small stream of water come out from a hose.

The planting method depends on the type of aquatic plants. Basically, planting starts from the foreground of a layout and progresses to the middle ground and then to the background. The aquatic plants planted in the foreground are the short type that spreads across the substrate by runners. This type of plant is often sold in a pot. They should be taken out of the pots before planting and divided into small bunches that are easy to plant with tweezers. The important point for planting the foreground is to space the aquatic plants far enough from each other, anticipating that they will spread by runners. They need to be kept away from the glass surface of the aquarium as well for the same reason.

In the middle ground, mainly rosette type plants such as Cryptocoryne and Echinodorus are planted. They should also be removed from their pots. This type of plant is planted by holding it at the roots with a grip type tweezers. If the root stock is large and the plant does not stay put easily, you can mound powder type Aqua Soil over the root section to anchor the plant down.

In the background, mainly tall stem plants are planted. Planting will be easier if you align the stem plants by the terminal buds, cut them to the same length, and, for those that grow large leaves, strip the large leaves off the part of the stems that will be buried in the substrate. As a general rule, stem plants are planted one stem at a time using tweezers. In the case of thin-stemmed plants, you can create a dense planting in a short time if you plant a few stems at a time, holding them together with tweezers. The important point for planting stem plants is to insert the stem into the substrate in an angle, since it tends to slip out of the substrate if inserted perpendicularly when the aquarium is filled with water. If you are going to plant many different types of aquatic plants in the background, deciding on the area to place each type and placing skinny sticks as markers on the substrate make it easier to keep the overall layout in a good balance. When the planting of stem plants is finished, the aquarium is filled with water, the stem plants are untangled with tweezers so that the terminal buds are pointing upward, and the creation of a layout is complete. Trimming the stem plants later is an important step to produce nicely shaped bushes of stem plants. I will discuss this in detail in the next article.

If you lay all the stem plants in the same direction as you plant them in the substrate, you can easily plant them densely. In case of planting thin-stemmed aquatic plants such as Green Rotala, plant two or three stems together.

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