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Planting Plants









Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 17:09:48 -0700
From: jgarden2000 at juno_com
Subject: Planting plants

 You wrote:

How do you plant plants? I've heard someone mentioning only putting in
half your gravel, adding the plants, then putting the remainder over
their roots, but what about later additions? I've seen lots of pics of
densely planted tanks, but I just don't see how I could get in to work!

I want to set the tank up right this time around! :-)

Thanks,

William

I am the new comer to the list, but I have a couple of suggestions.  1.  Get
a long pair of tweezers.  I got a nice three piece aquascaping set from
Florida Driftwood.  2. Get a copy of an inexpensive plant book called
Aquarium Plants Manual, by Ines Scheurmann, published by Barrons.

The little book gives very good planting tips, such as: how deep to plant
stems vs. rosettes vs. rhizomes, etc..  It is also an excellent short
reference book with good plant pictures and full descriptions/care info,
etc.  It does not cover as many plants as the Tepoot book, The Aquarium
Plants.  But, it does tell more about the plants it does cover.

Long aquascaping tweezers make planting a dense tank much, much, much
easier.  It becomes simple to hold a stem plant, grass, etc just above the
roots, and gently press it into the substrate as deep as you like...without
disturbing any adjacent plants.  The only trick comes in removing the
tweezers, but not the plant.  With a little experimenting, this becomes very
reliable.  I do the following: 1)  initially press the plant deeper into the
substrate than you want;  2)  without pulling up, open and close the
tweezers to create a little room between the stem, the tweezers and the
substrate;  3) slide the tweezers tightly to the side (not up yet);  4)
slooowly withdraw the tweezers;  5) once tweezers are removed, use them to
slide a little substrate over the base of the stem;  6) pull the stem up a
little, so it is at the desired depth.

Good luck