I want to do a planted tank with guppies and have been told with the right choice of plants the fry will have a place to hide. So are there any noobie tutorials on properly setting up as my luck with plants in the past has been nothing but bad! :laugh:

I figure guppies are a nice looking fish and not too destructive unlike my cichlids so any help is appreciated...reading through what others do i've been getting confused like CO2 added or something and all that...NEWBIE NEEDING HELP! :P

:drunk:

I personaly don't use CO2, because It will cost me more money than buying ferts, and, ferts work just as good, for me that is.....but, there will be plants that will only grow with the addition of CO2, and, if you do buy thoes, i and don't want to make a DIY, or sped ALOT of money on a real system, i would just do more frequient water changes. (that will add CO2 into your aquarium.)

I would go with at least 1.5 WPG. (lighting) and, maybe 2-3 inches of sand, or, your favorite substrate, but, the largest i would use would be a little larger than a grain of sand.

the plants i would say, are:

java moss, java fern, christmas moss, any cryptocrone, any anubias, few swords, i would reccomend narrow leaf chain sword, i have that growing quite well in my 50 gallon. i think that is a good start on it. i would be glad to help you with any other questions you may have.

oh, i would also suggest some type of shrimp, i use red cherry shrimp ( Neocaridina denticulata sinensis) i think that is the correct name for them any way....and also Singapore Wood Shrimp are an awesome looking shrimp, filter feeders.

(there are MANY more plants that grow well in the low lighted aquarium, i'll add some more when i get a chance,or, you could just go to aquahobby.com, and look at there plant section, which, is an awesome list of plants.)

might i add to suggest water sprite as a top water plant, but if u do choose the sprite, get more than 1.5WPG as it will shade ur other plants

as for floating plants, duck weed and frogbit are the only ones i have been succesfull growing.......and, with duck weed, you don't really need to have higher lighting, they are small enough to allow enough light to hit the bottom. good plant, i have a lot of it in my 40 gallon, and, am having to constintly putting it in my pond, and 50 gallon. (the fish don't seem to eat it in my 40, but, it should grow nicely with peacefull fish. giant danios seem to like it, but, the angels don't seem to like it, weird.

as i said before, feel free to add any other information i may have negleted to post, and, if u have any questions, feel free to ask.

awesome thanks for the tips, I use sand or calcium carbonate (crushed coral) pro-dominantly so I'm glad i can still use that...what about weighting them in while the roots develop? i know to remove the alloy wire usually there to bundle them but occasionally when I've failed in the past they'll be floating on the surface from what i assume is a bad footing.

Thicker the plants are that the babies can hide in the better, i don't want to breed for the sake of it but i would like to keep my stock up when i lose some.

You might want to go with playground sand instead of the coral sand for your plants, I don't remember where I read it but I seem to remember somthing about coral sand having somthing in it that "burns" plants roots.

i was going to use a silver sand, high grade white sand, looks gorgeous with a colorful fish specy in the tank (which good guppies can be) and i reckon it will set the plant color off. In all my tanks i either use that sand or a mix of that and calcium carbonate, its not good on its own with cichlids cause its a light sand and gets in the filters but with small fish like that will be awesome.

just gotta get some money together for filters first lol i got the tanks lined up with no money for filtration.

Aponogeton bulbs will grow in just about any substrata and there are several varoius types that can be gotten.