New Tank - Which Plants?

[Darks!de]

I'm in the process of setting up a 110gl tank which will house a colony of leucs. The dimensions are 36 x 24 x 30. There will be a false bottom, waterfall, and small stream running a diagnally through the tank into a pond. The background will be coco/silicone. I will probably have about 3 misting nozzles also. I'm not sure yet on the surface substrate, but probably a mix of leaf litter, sphagnum and maybe some java by the water feature.

My question is about the plants. What kind of plants should i use for this tank taking into acccount the construction and the leucs that will be living in here?

-Luke

[KeroKero]

You could have a wide range of plants ranging probibly up to 24" which gives you a lot to choose from. You could do a sparser, more natural look with a lot of leaf litter, a couple of bushy plants like calathea, maybe a small vining plant or something to crawl around branches and part of the background, or even a couple of ferns here and there. You could also deck it out in a much more idealistic terrarium "rainforest" idea and have branches decked out in moss, ephiphytes, as well as the back mounted with similar plants. I think the leucs will still love poking around the leaf litter so I wouldn't plant the ground level too much, keep it to a few bushy plants, and probibly toss in a bunch of springtails to take over the leaf litter area, giving them a nice snack to hunt for in the leaves. Marshy areas next to the pond could be planted with a variety of wet feet loving plants like peace lilies and nanas. There are a number of plant suppliers, so its basically a matter of taste, size, and lighting. The more plants you have, the better your lighting better be.

The leucs honestly wouldn't care much either way if you planted it heavily or not, included broms or not, or even included the stream or not. This is all stuff they would thrive just as well without, and is more for you than them. This isn't to say they wouldn't take advantage of a brom as a sleeping spot, but they don't *need* it as a species for any part of their life cycle. They'd be just fine in a tank with damn sphagnum moss substrate, some leaves to hide under when stressed/sleeping, and food.

[xxll]

if your gona have a mister, you could probably get java moss to grow up the back, this makes a great affect, try putting pots in the foam, that way you can grow less epyphic plants on the back ground, once the java moss is starting to get thick you can actually plant some plants right on top of it, such as Selaginellas and some other ferns, i would put any brooms on wood so they dont get to wet sitting straight on the back ground. i like the idea of having less plants in the foreground, lots of leaf litter with some moss covered rocks and wood would look nice, in the marginal area between the water and the land and in the water i would put peace lilys, anubias and minture swords, make sure your aquatic substright is good for plant growth, iv found that aquatic and marginal plants grow better when you have a layer of substright made especially for aquatic plants such as flourite, riccia or eco complete.

[Darks!de]

I have a bag of eco-complete just sitting in my room...so i might use that, however i really liked the white sand (well not really sand, more like fine gravel) look. I'll definitelly have some anubias nana in there, and maybe some other smaller plants...

Luke

[KeroKero]

Well you could always use the plant substrate, plant the plants in it, then cover that with a layer of sand/gravel. I did that a bunch of times in planted freshwater tanks. I worked great unless you like to redecorate.... or have fish who liked to do it for you (I used this with no digger fish, only calm backwater tanks lol).