Best soil and plants?

[Otterfun]

Originally Posted by madmonahan

Only water wisteria?

If I where to order some from someone on this website. How can a pick out the snail eggs/snails, and dead plants?

PlantedAquariumCentral.com
I got most of my plants from there, except the wisteria and the Marimo Moss Ball in the photo. I got those from PetSmart. I think if you mentioned this website, which I did not know at the time of ordering, you get a discount.

Note: Crypts melt and take a while to regrow and I understand it is the nature of the plant when being transplanted. Mine (between the snail and the heater) has some melting but several stronger leaves remained and not dying as we speak.

[madmonahan]

I'm thinking of ordering a few plants from Pandabetta. But I don't know how much I should ask for. I'm thinking of these things for the NPT

Java fern
Water sprite
A few moss balls
And 4 trumpet snails.

Would this be enough? And how do you clip the plants when they grow to much?? Sorry for so many questions, lol I just want to be prepared!

[madmonahan]

Also, the hood I have for the tank, has a 15watt T8 Full Spectrum Lamp. Is this okay for those kind of plants??

[Otterfun]

Originally Posted by madmonahan

I'm thinking of ordering a few plants from Pandabetta. But I don't know how much I should ask for. I'm thinking of these things for the NPT

Java fern
Water sprite
A few moss balls
And 4 trumpet snails.

Would this be enough? And how do you clip the plants when they grow to much?? Sorry for so many questions, lol I just want to be prepared!

In my case, I think I over-ordered because I did not think about the plants growing and expanding.

Marimo Moss balls(MMB) are nice, and my snail and shrimp graze on my MMB. But mine tend to pick up specks of my FloraMax as it moves around a tad every now and then.

You might want to consider some plants like hygrophilia which I read are nitrite busters, and some plants do not do that.

Try this site for research on plants or fish, I learned a lot from it:
http://www.tropicalfishkeeping.com/profiles/

[Sprinkles55]

For crypts I recommend wendtiis and parvas. Those are the only ones I've gotten in the past, but they have been great for me. Do get some hyrophilias, they're wonderful.

When planting stem plants, you can go a few routes. You can clip the plants down to whatever height you want them at, and they will normally sprout new growth from there. If you started off with very few plants, you can replant the clippings to fill out what you already have. At least, this is for stem plants.
Great link Otterfun gave by the way :)
Also, your light sounds good!

[madmonahan]

How do I clip the leaves? I think I have a lot of stuff down but a few things: how to clip the leaves, how to know if the plant is dead and/or has dead leaves, and what to do with dead leaves/plant?