10 Gallon Community adding live plants help

[matttimms49]

Hello Ovas,

I'm looking for a little advice/help on adding live plants to an already cycled set up tank.

I currently have a 10 gallon freshwater stocked with:

7 Celestial Pear Danio
3 Endler Guppy
2 Oto's
3 Dwarf Corys

I'm running a Marineland Penguin 100, that I have upgraded with some extra ceramic media. At the moment I have some small floating plants and 2 moss balls in there.

Do you think that the tank is over stocked or just maxed out?? I wanted to get some more live plants into the tank but don't have any substrate apart from gravel. Is there any way of adding some live plants in without having to drain the tank? Could I try adding some small potted plants and bury them in the gravel? Or maybe add in more floating plants? Or maybe there are some super easy plants that could live in the gravel?

Any advice would be great as I don't want to tip in some substrate for plants and make a big mess!

All help/advice welcome.

Cheers,
Matt

[exv152]

Hi Matt. Welcome to OVAS, gravel is also considered substrate and depending on how much gravel you have you may be able to plant right into the substrate using some low light and easy plants like crypts, hygrophila, etc. You can also add a soil based substrate to the gravel but I would add small amounts at a time so as to not disturb the balance of the tank. How about some pics?

[matttimms49]

Hi! Thanks for the reply. I will try and get some photos up today after I do my water change.

Cheers,
Matt

[Gilbotron]

My first planted tank was with inert gravel - as mentioned, it works if you stick with easy plants.  You can also insert root tabs under the gravel to help get them started.  Another option would be Anubias or Java Fern tied to driftwood/rocks - they don't need to be planted (in fact they die if the rhizome is buried).

Water wisteria, water sprite, dwarf sag and most crypts worked well for me in gravel without ferts or good light.  Wisteria grows like crazy in any conditions and can get quite tall so be prepared to trim tops off monthly if you don't want it growing out of the tank...

Your tank looks pretty stocked.  Good rule of thumb is 1" of fish per gallon of water, but it all depends on how often you do water changes and if you have good plant mass and plant growth consuming excess ammonia, nitrites and nitrates in the water. Your fish are all peaceful, so territory aggression shouldn't be an issue.

[matttimms49]

Great thanks for the advice I've added a lot of floating plants and have tied some Anubis on the driftwood. Will see how that goes.