# SW plants, what's the deal?



## JDM (Dec 9, 2012)

So, I goes to the LFS guy, "my water is really hard so I might do this or that..."

And he goes, "Well, you could just go salt and not worry about it."

and I goes, "True... what kind of plants can I put in salt water?"

and he goes, "No, you can't do plants..."

Deal breaker!

No, I don't actually talk like that.

I was not aware at the time that a salt water tank had no plants that could be used. I just assumed that there were and that I was just not noticing them anywhere. Is that actually fact? Are there absolutely no plants that can be put in a salt tank? I get it that kelp is huge but there has got to be some small plants that could be setup.

OK, this I posted about 10 minutes ago in the FW section and I subsequently moved it here. Meanwhile I exercised my lazybone and did 60 seconds of research to find lots of plants available for SW systems.

My question becomes, why would the LFS guy say "no plants" when there are plants?

Jeff.


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## Reefing Madness (Jun 26, 2011)

Not for nothing, I don't know your LFS guy, but he's an idiot and doesn't know what he's talking about. He coulda threw in there that, if you got algae and plant eating fish, that they would munch it all down, but thats not the case with all SW fish.
http://live-plants.com/


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## JDM (Dec 9, 2012)

Reefing Madness said:


> Not for nothing, I don't know your LFS guy, but he's an idiot and doesn't know what he's talking about. He coulda threw in there that, if you got algae and plant eating fish, that they would munch it all down, but thats not the case with all SW fish.
> http://live-plants.com/


That was one of the sites that I found. While I am not considering SW in the near future, having plants would certainly make the decision to consider it far more likely as I would be highly resistant to the idea of a tank without plants.

Of course the next issue becomes, what is needed to setup a plant only salt tank... perhaps with shrimp or something invertebrate-wise instead of fish?

This is mostly rhetorical... unless there is somewhere you can direct me to do some pointed reading on the topic I don't expect anyone to go on about anything given the fairly remote possibility of me actually needing the information.

Jeff.


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## beaslbob (Oct 17, 2012)

JDM said:


> So, I goes to the LFS guy, "my water is really hard so I might do this or that..."
> 
> And he goes, "Well, you could just go salt and not worry about it."
> 
> ...


I went throught the exact same thing with a lfs here when setting up my 55g marine system in 2003. And as a result it was a real pain to get going.


Then at one big box type store the guy stated "if you get really lucky you could get some macro algae on your live rock". which started a search for macroalgae instead of plants.

There are actual plants for saltwater but they tend to be slow growers and hard to maintain or in the case of mango seeds grow into really really big trees.

But there are many fast growing marco algae that kinda look like plants and serve much the same function in marine systems the plants do in FW systems.

I eventually partitioned the back 3" of my 55g and grow caulerpa and chaeto in there. Nitrates dropped to 0 in three weeks. After that all the operational diffuculties went away. And the tank was easy to maintain for the next 8 years.


my .02


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