Top 10 Easy Beginner Aquarium Plants

Hey, how's it going everyone? Welcome back to Keeping Fish Simple. So in today's video, we're gonna be talking about the 10 best beginner plants for your aquarium. So this video is gonna be aimed at beginners, but some of you guys who have been keeping fish for a while might be interested. This is gonna be a list of the 10 things that I would recommend for beginners to keep if they wanna delve into the whole entire planted aquarium world. So I'd recommend anyone keeping a freshwater aquarium to consider keeping plants. This is because plants do a really, really good job of using up nutrients that are toxic to fish in an aquarium and they use them to grow and it's gonna help cycle out your aquarium and pretty much act as like a natural kind of filter for all those bad chemicals. Another thing that they do is they provide surface area for heaps of beneficial bacteria and stuff to grow. And overall, I think it just looks better to have natural plants in an aquarium. So in today's video, I'm gonna give you guys that list. Basically, I'm gonna rank this list from 10 being like my worst beginner plant. They're all kind of like equally as good. And then number one being my favorite and best beginner plant. So make sure you stay around to the end of the video for the YouTube algorithm. It really does help me out. And also because you're gonna get to see all of the 10 plants. And without any further ado, let's get started. Okay, so at number 10 on my list is gonna be water sprite. So water sprite is a funny little plant. This is a plant that is pretty much impossible to kill. It's a plant that you can float on the top of your aquarium. It's also a plant that you can put in the substrate and you can plant it and it'll grow perfectly fine. So it gives off these kind of like ferny styles of looks. It's like a big bushy plant. You don't need to have any CO2 in your aquarium. You don't need to have any fertilizers in your aquarium. And in fact, I just use this as a floating plant in a lot of my aquarium. So I use this in a lot of grow out tanks. I use it to soak up a lot of those bad chemicals that we don't want in the aquarium and it helps deal with algae and all that kind of stuff. So if you guys wanna see what I use water sprite for, there'll be like a video up here. Basically, I use it to treat a lot of algae problems in my aquarium. It's a really, really good plant for people who wanna breed live bearers because it's got heaps of little spaces for the fry to go and hide. And overall, it's one of my favorite beginner plants to recommend to people because it's super easy to grow. It grows fast. You can literally grow this off of like little leaf cuttings and stuff like that. It's just crazy. So definitely a really good plant to consider if you guys are looking for something that's gonna float and also something that you can put into the substrate. Okay, and at number nine, it's gonna be something a little bit funny and you're probably not gonna see this on other lists on YouTube. So this is gonna be something that I've kind of accidentally stumbled upon and had a lot of success with and literally put no effort into doing any of this. And this is gonna be micro swords. So micro swords are like little tiny plants that carpet. I bought a tub of this stuff, like, I don't know, six months ago. I put literally, I just kind of put a couple of springs around this aquarium. And if you look at the bottom of this aquarium, it's absolutely covered in it. This stuff is so, so cool. So it creates a beautiful display without having to have any extra lighting or anything like that. I'm literally running this aquarium off of an eBay light and a sponge filter. That's how simple we're getting on this channel. It's stupid. Literally, I just let it sit in there and it grew into the gravel sand kind of substrate. And it's just been so prosperous. So got heaps of guppies in this aquarium. Guppies go into the grass and like have their babies and then all the babies can hide in there. And it's been really, really cool. I've actually like fallen in love with this plant. It doesn't have any problems with growth and stuff like that. It's super easy to grow. It's gonna send runners off and carpet along your aquarium and it creates like a beautiful display. So normally the other plants that you'd have to do to create a carpet like this, you need like CO2 injections and stuff like that and highlighting. In this plant, you don't need any of that. So I definitely recommend a little bit more like highlighting. I wouldn't recommend putting them in like no light. I don't think they'll do that well. And also they look better when they have a bit more light on them. So you can get away with a little cheap eBay light and have a lot of success growing this plant. Okay. And so plant number eight on my list is gonna be balsam area. This is kind of like a little bit of an oddball plant. I'd kind of say, this is a really, really cool plant. This is basically a really long kind of grassy plant. And it's gonna grow the same way as a micro saw is doing, but you can't really grow like a carpet of this stuff because it grows too tall. And basically if you look behind me, there's like a bunch of stringy plants in this aquarium. And those big stringy plants are the balsam area. So it's like kind of like a seagrass kind of look. Basically you just plant a couple of sprigs of this in your aquarium. It's super easy to grow. Kind of like one of those beginner plants. A lot of people can't kill it. And basically what it's gonna do is gonna set itself in. It might start melting away at first. Often this plant will melt off its leaves, but then it's just gonna set in and it's just gonna start going crazy. So it sends runners off everywhere. I've literally got this huge runner happening right here. I'm gonna have to pull it out because it's just too much of this stuff growing. I like to use this one as like a background kind of plant. So I like to line the back of an aquarium with it, let it grow up and create like, instead of having like a painted back or like a stuck on back, I just like to have a plant back. So it's cheaper. And in my opinion, it's easier to manage and it looks really, really cool. So another really good beginner plant is Vallisneria. Okay, and at number seven is gonna be Bacopa. So Bacopa was actually my first ever aquarium plant along with the plant that I'm gonna talk about at the end of this video. So Bacopa was one of those plants. I actually picked it up inside like a little bag and it was like one of those ones cultured in a lab. So I thought it was really cool. I was like, I'm just gonna get my first live plant. I planted this stuff and it just literally took off. It was crazy. So it's a stem plant. It's got lots of little like round leaves and it kind of grows similar to like Rotala and things like that. It grows up like a big stem and basically it's gonna send off a lot of little round leaves around it and it looks really cool. It's super easy to grow. And basically what you can do is you can just chop the top off and you can plant the top into the bottom and get another plant. So really, really cool plant to grow. You're gonna find this at like almost every store and a lot of people use this because it's a really fast growing plant to soak up a lot of nutrients. So I wouldn't recommend floating it, but it does really, really well if you plant it in like deeper substrates, but it's not gonna be fussy. You can just plant it in any old substrate and it's gonna grow roots in and it's just gonna go crazy. Okay, and at number six on my list is gonna be Crypts. So Crypts, I'm generally kind of like new to. I've only been keeping Crypts for about a year and a half-ish. And the reason was I actually wasn't too keen on the way they looked, but given keeping them now, it's completely changed my mind. These guys are very similar to Swords. I've got a ton of them in the back here and they're kind of like a mid to foreground kind of like background plant. It's a whole range of different kinds of Crypts you can get. So I could be more detailed and say one specific type of Crypt and I guess if you guys are looking for that, I'm just gonna say the Crypt of Wendis. So I've got a heap of them in the back here. They're like kind of like a dark green kind of Crypt. Basically what they do is they plant themselves in. They have like a little base there and they send just big leaves out instead of having like a stem or something like that, they just send leaves out of the gravel and sand. A super easy plant to grow. Basically the way this plant spreads is it can send off little runners, but I've actually noticed what it does is if you take like a bunch of these little plants, plant them, what they're gonna do is create a lot of little plants inside of that. So every now and then you can actually take out the big Crypt and it'll have a lot of little Crypts and then you can plant out an aquarium that way. And that's how I've gotten all my Crypts. So it started literally in a little tub and now I've got Crypts in aquarium over here. I've got Crypts here and here and here. So a really, really cool plant. These actually, you can sell these for a little bit of profit because they're kind of like a more valuable plant. They take a little bit longer to grow and they're one of my favorite plants. They look really cool and they've added like a different aspect of different scapes and things like that that I can do on my aquariums. Okay, and so plant number five is gonna be Anubias. So Anubias is another really, really interesting style of plant. This is a plant that grows off of its rhizome. So basically what that means is you plant its stem, which is, it's like a stem, it's called a rhizome. You plant this on like a piece of hardscape, so like a rock or piece of driftwood or something like that. You plant it by like super gluing it on or you can tie it on or whatever. What it does is it grows its roots on and it attaches to the plant and then it grows that way. So it's a very slow growing plant, but it has beautiful round leaves. It's a bunch of different types of Anubias you can get. It's one of my favorite plants. It's super, super hardy. It's so hard to kill. It's really easy to grow. You don't need to add anything to the aquarium. It's just gonna grow itself and it will take a long time to grow, but it allows you to aquascape on parts of the aquarium where you didn't think you could aquascape. So if you have like a big piece of driftwood in your aquarium and you wanna add something to it and grow plants on that, Anubias is gonna be a killer. Okay, and so plant number four is gonna be another rhizome growing plant. And this is gonna be Java Fern. So Java Fern is a plant that I've had for a very long time. It was actually my first rhizome growing plant and it's an absolutely awesome plant. I keep it in this aquarium down here. I've pretty much got it in nothing. Most of my planted aquarium, basically this will grow the same way as the Anubias. You just attach it to a piece of driftwood or a piece of rock, whatever, and it's just gonna grow on that rock. And the way this plant spreads is different to the Anubias. The Anubias just like attaches and it keeps growing along the piece of hardscape, but the way this one's gonna reproduce is it's gonna send off little seeds on its leaves and it's gonna grow lots of little mini Java Ferns. So Java Ferns can get quite big. Sometimes you have to cut them down, but they add like a different style of design to an aquarium than what the Anubias does. So basically it has like more ripply leaves and it has longer leaves. So there's a whole bunch of different types you can get. You can get narrow leaf, you can get like the really kind of wavy ones. It's one of my favorite plants. You can make really cool bushes with it by attaching it to driftwood. It adds a lot of little hiding spots for guppy fry and stuff like that. If you have like big jungles of it in corners of your aquarium. And I really like the way this plant looks. So it's just a really cool plant if you guys are looking for something that's really easy to grow. Again, it's really, really slow growing. So it's gonna take a little bit of time for this to settle into an aquarium. But once it gets going, you're gonna have so many little like mini Java Fernlets. Java Fernlets. That sounds so stupid. You're gonna have heaps of these little Java Ferns that you can put around your aquarium. So number three is gonna be another super, super easy plant to grow. And it's gonna be Java Moss. So not Java Fern, Java Moss. So Java Moss is really good if you guys are breeders. So if you guys wanna spawn fish or if you guys wanna use this to hide some guppy fry that are in your aquarium and little live bear babies and stuff like that. It's gonna be an awesome plant. So basically it's just like a moss. You're gonna buy it by like a little tub or like a ball of it. And it's gonna spread across your aquarium. I haven't noticed this to be super fast growing compared to like the Water Sprite and stuff like that. But it is a very, very cool plant and it's very, very easy to grow. So basically you can leave this stuff out in the sun and leave it there for like a year, bring it back in if you've still got it somehow. And it's gonna still grow. It's like, I'm not joking, it still will. So this stuff is super easy to grow. It's gonna create a lot of hiding spots. And the best thing about it is it creates a lot of surface area. So you're gonna have heaps of those little beneficial bacteria and stuff like that on it, helping you cycle your aquarium. And it's also gonna have lots of little tiny things that fry can eat. So little critters and infestorias and things like that that are really, really beneficial for fry. It's gonna create like a little constant source of food without you having to feed the aquarium all the time. And it's not kind of like an aquascaping plant. I wouldn't consider it. You can tie it to rocks and stuff and it'll grow on the rocks and you can create cool displays like that. But it's a bit hard to tame. Sometimes it can get really, really big, but it's really good for spawning stuff. So I'm using it to spawn Neon Tetras and it's just a really, really good plant for breeding. Okay, and so spot number two on the list is gonna be Water Wisteria. So this, along with the Bacoba, was my first ever aquarium plant. And this is an awesome, awesome plant. It's just so good. So basically this is pretty similar to the Water Sprite. It's got fatter leaves and basically it grows the exact same way as a Water Sprite. So you can float it, you can put it in the substrate. But the best thing about it is I like the way it looks a little bit more than the Water Sprite. It does, it like has stems like Water Sprite does. It doesn't go as well floating. Water Sprite kind of grows a bit better when it's floating. This stuff does a lot better when it's planted in substrate. Basically what you can do is you can get a couple sprigs of it. It's really cheap and it's gonna grow like crazy. You can put it into your substrate and then you can chop the tops off and plant more and more. You can create like a huge bush of this stuff. And if you add fertilizer and stuff like that, it's just gonna go nuts. I really liked it because I had heaps of guppies in my aquarium and this big bush was just housing so many little fries. So basically the parents would give birth and then the fry would just go into this bush and they would never see them until they could come out and then they wouldn't be eaten by the parents. So this is a really good plant for you guys who are looking for something that's gonna grow really quick. This is basically just gonna suck all the nitrates out of your aquarium and it's one of my favorite plants to add to like guppy aquariums and live bearer aquariums in general. Okay, and so in the number one spot on my list of the best beginner plants is gonna be Swords. So Amazon Swords. So basically I actually never thought that I would add this to the top of my list and after giving this plant for a couple of years, it's definitely at the top. So I was gonna add Water Wisteria to the top because I thought it was way easier to grow. But this is gonna be the best beginner plant and it's because you literally just add this to your aquarium and it just grows. So it's a really cool plant. It's not like a super fast growing plant but it's one of the easiest plants and most common plants available in the aquarium hobby. Basically I've got like Amazon Swords in the back here as you can see. They're a really good background plant and these guys just grow super easy. You just add them to your aquarium and what they're gonna do is over time they're just gonna send out lots of runners and then basically you're gonna have lots of little baby Amazon Swords. So I really like this plant because if you guys can actually grow them and get them to propagate again, you can actually sell that and you can get like quite a bit of money. They're more expensive as a plant than some of those easy growing plants that you'll find. So basically just plant it and it's gonna set a really, really deep system of roots into the substrate and then it's just gonna start to prosper so it's just gonna go nuts. And basically it grows the exact same as the creeps do. It's one of those plants that just grows into the substrate and it's just gonna send out huge leaves. Now I like to use this plant to spawn my angelfish. So the angelfish will go onto it and they'll lay their eggs. That's just what they like to do. I've never seen them laying on anything except for that. Maybe little pieces of driftwood and stuff like that but they really do like that. So another thing that I like about this plant is because it has so much surface area, it does provide a really, really good area for lots of those beneficial bacteria to grow and it's one of my favorite plants. I just think it looks really good. Basically, there's no aquarium with one of these in it that doesn't look good. And for me, it just does deserve number one because it's super hard to kill. I haven't killed any of these plants before. One thing I'm gonna give you a really quick disclaimer about is when you plant this, normally because these plants aren't grown underwater, they're grown immersed, they're gonna start to melt. So they're basically gonna go from living out of the water to in the water and the plant's gonna adjust so it's gonna melt off a couple of leaves. Don't worry, don't throw it away because it's not dead. Be wary that this could happen. It's normally not your fault that the plant starts to die. It's just melting away and then you'll get some new leaves coming up and then you'll have a really, really good plant. So that's pretty much the list, guys. Thank you so much for watching this video. I really do appreciate it and I'll see you guys in the next one.