Personally, I don't like my tanks to be too bright. I have opted to
find plants that will survive with less light. One of my favorite
tanks is a ten gallon. I have an Anubia and those long thin bunch
plants. All grow slowly, but fill the ends to balance a rather large
and colorful ornament. My fish love it. The plants and the ornament
provide lots of places to swim through.

I find "survival of the fittest" the way to go. I buy "low light"
bundles. I know most of these plants are raised in better light and
nutrition conditions than they get in my tanks. I consider putting
these "hot house" plants into my tanks like putting a "prepy" into the
ghetto. I have had good luck finding "survivors," but have had bad
luck with snails and algae until recently. Now I seem to have a
winning combination in all my tanks (4).

I am sure that the tanks that are well managed have much more
luxuriant growth and may well be worth the cost and time to maintain.
I just am discussing an alternative for those lazy folks like me.
This week I saw a friend's tank and was amazed at the beauty of the
"silk" plants she had. Her fish and water looked pristine.

There are choices.

On Wed, 22 Oct 2003 21:21:31 -0500, "Erik Soballe"
wrote:

Hey all,

I recently set up a 10 gallon planted tank(about 2 or 3 months ago)..
Anyways, all of the plants I put in there would shrivel up and die over the
course of about two weeks. Lurking on a lot of posts on this newsgroup, I
decided to buy a new bulb for my tank. This new bulb(the cheapest I could
buy) seems about twice as bright as my old bulb(significantly more
expensive, but really really old). Now my plants seem to be thriving. All
I gotta say is that there's a lot of truth in replacing your tank bulbs
often. Just thought I'd share my success story with the group.

-Erik