# Plants That Grow Good In The Sand



## Fish on the Mind (Feb 9, 2012)

What plants grow good in sand? 
Are there alternatives ways to have live plants if you already have sand in you're tank?

Sand looks great in tanks. However fake plants do not so this would be a good spot to place your thoughts and ideas about this topic.

Looking forward to hearing from fellow aquarium hobbists.

***(added pictures of tank)*** (and yeah I have a wide variety of fish in the tank but that is going to change. made the mistake of buying fish i liked the looks of then put them all in one tank)


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## solarz (Aug 31, 2010)

I don't have personal experience with a pure inert sand substrate, but from what I've read, a pure sand substrate would become fertile over time from fish waste (assuming you don't vacuum it off all the time). In the mean time, you can add root tabs to increase nutrients.

The key to growing plants in inert substrates is to dose fertilizers. I think if you follow EI dosing, you can grow good plants in pretty much any substrate.


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## Fish on the Mind (Feb 9, 2012)

What kind of ferts would you recommend. I currently have flourish phosphorus, nitrogen and iron. I have not vacuumed in hopes one day The tank can be planted. But first I would like to gather as much info before I go ahead with it. As of right now I have a 90 gallon tank (with sand) and two 40 watt bulbs so not enough watts per gallon. However that doesn't matter to much yet because I am still getting info together.


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## Fish on the Mind (Feb 9, 2012)

Also new to this whole live plants idea. So what is ei doseing?


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## damianrosario2000 (Nov 3, 2009)

solarz you are partially right. If sand is big enough to let water and fish droppings go into it will eventually become fertile. But if sand is small it usually compacts and does not let plants absorb anything from the substrate.

Most plants will work fine with a pure sand or gravel only substrate, however as solarz said, the key is to add fertilizers. And another thing to keep in mind is making sure that is not too compact because it will not let the roots to grow and might kill the plant. I recommend to add some gravel to it and then on top of it put 1 inch of sand.

I had an inert substrate for a freshwater planted tank for 2 years and worked fine. I barely added ferts, because fish produce some and the CO2 helps plants transforming it.

EI is the acronym for Estimative Index. Meaning you have to measure your tank the first day and then the day after so you can make an estimation of what your plants use per day. Once you know that, you put ferts in the right proportion.


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## damianrosario2000 (Nov 3, 2009)

Welcome to the planted tank world. Remember: "once you go green, you never go back". I know, it does not rhyme, but I don't care


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## Fishyfishyfishy (Mar 3, 2008)

solarz said:


> I don't have personal experience with a pure inert sand substrate, but from what I've read, a pure sand substrate would become fertile over time from fish waste (assuming you don't vacuum it off all the time). In the mean time, you can add root tabs to increase nutrients.
> 
> The key to growing plants in inert substrates is to dose fertilizers. I think if you follow EI dosing, you can grow good plants in pretty much any substrate.


Sand will never be fertile, no poo can go into the sand.

I used sand for over 5 years. I had great results planting vals, dwarf hygros and crypts in sand. They grow much slower than my dirted tank though. Now I went for a real soil tank and I will never go back to sand. I think sand is only good for fish only tanks. Or you can do sand over dirt, but I don't like that idea because of anaerobic problems (many have success with that though).

Give those a try, you don't really have much choices to achieve great success with sand without ferts/root tabs.


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## Fish on the Mind (Feb 9, 2012)

Okay sounds good. Also, the sand I got was kings play sand a while ago and it has not gone compact at all if anything it's more like quick sand. It's really soft! You can drop a small rock and it would sink down a little making it look like it has been there a while. 

What monitoring devices are out there that I would need? And if possible a price range if you guys now at all. 

My plan is to not use a co2 system rather use fish to balence the co2 levels. Tying to keep the price down as much as possible where I can. 

I'll try and get a pic up of the 90 gal tank I would like to plant it.

Thanks for all the advice and help!


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## WiyRay (Jan 11, 2009)

What kind of planted tank did you have in mind? 
Low tech vs high tech? 
Heavily planted vs lightly planted?
Simple-looking carpeted vs jungle-like scape?
If you could describe what kind of things you're looking for that would help. 
Better yet, you could google up a picture of a planted tank that you are ideally aiming for.
I'm just asking because all these different things require different plants which also have different requirements. Hope that didn't scare you off 

I've used some sort of artificial type of sand before when I first started. I have no idea what it is called. It was just a very shiny and smooth black sand from BA's, almost plasticy. I doubt it would have had any fertile value.

I didn't, or rather couldn't, vacuum much waste from the substrate because I would end up vacuuming up the sand too and disturb the plants. At best, I would swirl the water around gently to lift the waste from the surface to vacuum what I could up. 

I managed to grow my first plants in it. Crypts, Hygro's, Java ferns, etc. Which were all pretty easy plants. I would recommend these plants to start off with, as they're practically just-add-water. (Ba dum tshh , I know... corny)

When I took the tank apart, the sand pretty much resembled soil with incredibly healthy looking roots especially from the crypts which are known to be root absorbers. I think a good deal of plants also absorb nutrients from the water column so substrate wouldn't be of great importance. I generally just assume it's more for anchoring/rooting purposes.

Adding some malaysian trumpet snails might be something you want to look into. It isn't a bad idea depending on what kinds of plants you want and how densely you're going to plant it. They help to aerate the soil to prevent anaerobic bacteria. Of course, plant roots do more or less the same job, so if the tank will be heavily planted then scrap the snail idea. Also scrap this idea if you're looking into adding small plants and or carpeting plants. They uproot the little plants so much its frustrating -_-".

I don't know much about EI dosing but I think the general idea behind it is adding all the necessary ferts into the water to make it nutrient rich for the plants to absorb all that it needs/wants. Then each week, do a large water change and add the ferts all over again. The water change is necessary because it helps to "reset" the nutrient levels to prevent you from adding way too much of any particular fert that could cause an imbalance resulting in stuff such as algae outbreaks. A bit wasteful of ferts IMO though...

Hope you enjoyed my wall of text, and i apologize in advance haha.


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## Fish on the Mind (Feb 9, 2012)

Main reason I don't want to get rid of the sand is because that would be alot of work. However I like to work on tanks . What is it with the dirt that is so good ? And what would it take to get the right amount of substrate in a 90 gal it's a 48 by 18 and 24 high.

Like I was saying as of right now this is a plan and I'm gather as much info as I can get befor I jump into it.


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## Fish on the Mind (Feb 9, 2012)

The look I would like to achieve is a balence between heavily and lightly planted. So I'm kinda looking for like a carpet and like two tall bushy plants either side if the tank or something like that. Oh and a low tech is what I am aiming for.

And no prob for the wall post. In fact thanks for the help.


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## solarz (Aug 31, 2010)

I would suggest you do some research on planted tank substrates: not so much to follow "instructions", but rather to understand the principles behind it.

The bottom line is, with sufficient fertilization, substrate becomes irrelevant. If you want to go this route, look up EI dosing.

If you're like me and you don't want to mess with fertilizing all the time, you need to understand how substrates make nutrients available for plants.

You don't need to wait to get real plants. Go and get some now. (assuming you have enough light for it, which is the real key to growing plants, and a whole other topic). Also get some Malaysian trumpet snails, they are substrate diggers that will help aerate your sand and mix fish waste into the substrate so that the sand will become fertile.

The problem with just sand and fish waste is that, although our plants will have plenty of macronutrients, they are likely to be missing trace minerals. To remedy that will be your main goal with an inert substrate. You can either dose the water column, or use root tabs, or supplement your sand with some additives such as laterite or clay. You could, for example, mix your existing sand with a few bags of fluorite sand.

If you don't understand the "why" of these recommendations, then you should do more research. Don't blindly follow the advice of other hobbyists: everyone's tank is different, and what works for one person might not work for another.


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## Fish on the Mind (Feb 9, 2012)

I don't mind messing with ferts. I have a planted tank. I just planted last wed in my gravel tank. I'm going to wait and then take some clippings and try em in the 90 gal. Still have to get better lighting though. Only have 80 watts and Im sure that is not enough.


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## Fishyfishyfishy (Mar 3, 2008)

Fish on the Mind said:


> I don't mind messing with ferts. I have a planted tank. I just planted last wed in my gravel tank. I'm going to wait and then take some clippings and try em in the 90 gal. Still have to get better lighting though. Only have 80 watts and Im sure that is not enough.


Don't worry about light that much. I think substrate is the most important. I have success with "hard/high lighting" plants in tanks with 1watt per gallon, no ferts, no CO2.

The watt per gallon is useless, it only applies to T8 or T12 bulbs. I use T5HO lights.

According to the guidelines from forums/books, my tank is impossible to have high-light plants, but it works for me =)

Do more research and TRY stuff out. Everyone's tank is different.


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## Kan (Nov 12, 2011)

Doing EI does will help your plant grow for sure, no doubt about that. However I think it's still better to have substrate with higher CEC rating such as flourite or Soil, I believe sand and gravel both have very low CEC rating. I grow glosso using both gravel and organic soil. I notice glosso growing in gravel have much bigger leaf (2-3 times bigger). I suspect it's due to not being able to absorb much nutrition from their root. Plants in general can absorb nutrition much more efficiently from their root.


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