Yikes! That's a lot of light for a tank that size. I hope you are injecting
compressed CO2.

It can be difficult to keep plants in a tank with fish that get as large as
bichir do. They tend to uproot plants just by moving around. Something with
nice, strong roots, like Amazon swords or tiger lotuses (lilies) might be
good.
But rooted plants generally like a rich substrate. If your tank is new, you
might want to put some laterite balls in the substrate, near the roots of the
plants.


Leigh


I thought that would be a lot of light for freshwater. It used to be a salt
water tank which needed more light. I've been successful with reef tanks;
however, this nature aquarium thing is new to me. I decided to get into it when
I saw several books from a Japanese guy (Amano or something like that... there
were something like 3 volumes.) About how much CO2 do you need per gallon? I
currently have Java fern which are easy to keep alive but will cost me a lot of
money if I wanted to plant them all over a 100 gallon tank. That's why I
initially inquired about water spinach. What spectrum bulbs are best? I
suppose one of my blue spectrum from my reef tank days may not be too good for
the plants?

Is it easier to keep plants healthy in separate pots or to just plant them
into the bottom of the tank?

This water plant thing is tough. Even though I've been into fish aquariums for
over ten years, I feel like a rookie again because of this "natural aquarium"
thing. I thank you for any assistance.