Many people who enter the aquarium hobby tend to gravitate towards plastic and silk plants, but there is a far better option: live plants.

Plastic and silk plants offer a few benefits to the user. They are often cheap, readily accessible, look fairly realistic, never die, and require little to no maintenance besides wiping off the occasional algae from the surface of the leaves. However, despite these benefits, plastic and silk plants provide very little for the overall health and wellbeing of both the livestock and ecosystem of the tank. Plastic plants, specifically, can even injure livestock due to sharp or jagged edges of plastic. Some fish, like the betta, have delicate and showy fins that are prone to being ripped by plastic plants, where the ripped fins are susceptible to infection. Check out this video for a comparison of a betta with ripped fins from plastic plants and the healing process.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruMhNFWqN1Y

 

While plastic and silk plants do offer some sense of security for livestock and are appealing for the user, they usually end up causing more harm than good.

A far superior option to plastic or silk plants is to stock an aquarium with live plants, otherwise known as a planted tank. Live plants create a more natural and realistic environment for the fish. And, unlike plastic or silk plants, live plants produce oxygen that dissolves into the water column, where fish can then absorb the oxygen through their gills (AquaGoodness).

It should be noted that live plants are more expensive than plastic or silk plants, which is a genuine concern for those who are new to the hobby and might not have a lot of money to spend on it. While buying live plants at stores like Petco or PetSmart are readily available, they are usually more expensive and less quality than live plants that can be bought through smaller online companies like GlassGrownAquatics or Aquarium Co-OP.

Live plants can even be found locally through sites like Facebook Marketplace or AquaSwap on Reddit, where hobbyists often have trimmings or whole plants from their tanks that they sell for cheap or give away for free. There are lots options, as long as you know where to look.

Live plants truly offer so many benefits to both the user, the livestock, and the overall ecosystem of the tank. This is something that will be further discussed here in my discussion of the Walstad Method.