I myself go for plastic as the cichlids just like to rip into them, but if i had the choice and a nice small tank with nice fish i would go for real ones.

:Vangry: I hate plants

LOL steve. i prefer real plants, but with most cichlids it's near impossible to keep any. my dwarf/ community tank gives me a very serene feeling when i look at it i think it's because it looks so natural to me.

i love real plants, i've even gotten into the whole co2 injection and pc lights thing. i enjoy the heavilly planted tanks where you have to watch for a while to find the fish

ummmmmm i think ill go plastic. You can wash them, they wont die, and their un ripable unless you got some piranha’s :Vangry: but at the end of the day real plants look better and have benefits for the fish.

Plastic are gross, but i can see where you chiclid keepers are coming from, they do love eating their plants! :P

I prefer the real stuff though!

what did my oscar do then :D

Thats why i said unless u got some piranha in the tank. I didnt literally mean a piranha :D

My plecos ate plastic plants.

Real plants are nice. I love small tank with stacks of plants and lil fish. All you need is good lighting a some co2 :P DIY is cheap enough...or if you want to spend like $300 for a co2 kit...you can do that :P

Real plants just look more natural...I was thinking a plant only tank...some a few algae eaters. Quite a good idea...or maybe a large planted tank with a nice aro :D

I have done it all: plastic, "silk", and real.

I tried real plants a long time ago, when i was pretty new to keeping fish(so we're talking like 16 yrs. ago)but they didn't work out for me. I think partly they were kind of sickly when i got them. It was just one bunch of anacharis. Some of the leaves on it were mushy and blackish when i got it. I trimmed the dead/dying leaves off and stuck it in the gravel of my tank. Then i was at the petstore again and a newer employee(who doesn't even deal with the fish but had to help out b/c they were short!), told me to keep algae at bay, i should get a gold apple snail. I had some minor algae and the cory cats weren't even touching it...so i went with the one snail. It was like the size of a large marble. Yeah, it ate my plant!!!!! I was so mad, but then just stuck with plastic after that b/c it ate the algae off of the plastic plants but i was still left with plants that looked good. Then i bought a lettuce clip and fed it romaine and green leaf lettuce, in between algae blooms.

Most of my fish keeping life i have had plastic plants. I tried the "silk" ones, but algae stains them, fish flakes stain them and after a bit they look pretty bad.

Recently i have gotten back into live plants again. After having yet another bad experience with snails eating my plants(this time at least i didn't purposely have the snails in the tank, they hitched a ride), i am trying again. So far i'm having good luck, my Aponogeton crispus is blooming yet again(this time it's blooming in my divided 10 gallon tank), it sent a long shoot up to the surface of the water and i see a flower bud on the end of it, so it should be opening soon. I'm also hoping to order some live plants off of the net, to plant in my other tanks as well.

I too like a heavily planted tank. One where it's difficult to find the fish, i think they are so beautiful and natural looking. I like a natural tank, there's no day glo gravel in my tanks, just nice pea gravel. :) I did do colored gravel when i was younger, but have since come to like a natural tank.

nothin compairs to a realy plant, not to many "fake" plants look real. alot of people have had bad experiance with cichlids. i have heavy duty potted plants in my cichlid tanks altho i find my haps dont rip and tear at them at all. there tank is really nice looking. java ferns and moss's and sword plants as well as a few others. they do good with it.

FOr the african cichlida one tank has the fabric king of plants, one tank has none at all and the three tanks of tanganikian's they have real plants, they dont mess with them at all. and the guppies have real plants too.

So it just depends on the fish.

i must say even with all the times that real plants have pissed me off i still prefer them to fake plants! they just look stunning when ther;s mass plants!

Distributed in my tanks:

Java fern, moss, anubias, various cryptos, spirulina, amazonian swordsm, tiger lotus, water hyacith, various miscallaneous small fern type plants, water lilly , blanket grass and twisted varacis, Aponogeton crispus(

dont really do fake plants as ive had a fish choke on one, several gash themselves and a royal pleco ate most of one once as well

I think thier both equal.

I love real plants but goddammit I hate when they shed!

I love live plants because fake plants don't look so...real :laugh:. Yeah Vip, same thing happen to me too. I put an anachris in my chiclid tank and he ate it all :banghead:. Live plants have beneficial attributes. For example, the common household pothos absorb harmful ammonia and nitrate (is it nitrate or nitrite?).

I like real plants, but darn cichlids eat or uproot them. :cuss:

right on bro, I would so much love to have a tank like the one on our banner, but its just impossible with these guys.

I prefer real plants because they not only absorb the bad chemicals in the water, they give off oxygen, and they give fry a place to hide & eat (rootifers).

I've never tried fake plants - but I suck at real ones! :banghead:

For me it is real plants or nothing