Foreground plants! IME these are the hardest to find. If I could just find
some riccia fluitans and some glossostigma I would be happy. If you have the
resources to outfit one tank with CO2 and high lighting, I think you could get
a lot of people into plants. I find that the average person has never seen a
"real" planted tank and expects most plants to die. Seeing a wide variety of
plants THRIVE is what got me into this hobby. Also an experience: when I was
looking to setup a planted tank, I knew about CO2 and lighting solutions, but
was intimidated by the high cost. One LFS picked up on this, and told me
about DIY CO2, shop lights, and the krib. They gave me lots of options,
instead of just trying to sell me flourite and carbo plus. Now I try to do
all my shopping there, when possible. Without this experience, I would still
have but a lonely 10gallon aquarium with bright blue gravel, dreaming about
they day when I could afford the commercial systems. If I had the good
fortune of running an LFS, I think I would display a high-tech planted tank,
but also inform people of the DIY solutions. I would hope that those
successful in DIY endevours would come back for fish, food, etc.

In article , "NetMax"
wrote:
I manage a tropical fish dept, and I have a supplier who can provide me
with over a thousand types of plants, all identified by their scientific
names. I am not a specialty store, but I encourage the use of natural
plants and I want my customer's first experience with plants to be a good
one. Our water originates from the river, it's soft (2-3dgH, 2-3dkH),
slightly alkaline (7.5pH) and they typically have 0.8 to 1.4w/g of
fluorescent lighting available in tanks which are 16 to 18" deep.

I have six 60g plants tanks, so I can accommodate about 18-20 types of
plants. They need to be relatively easy to grow/maintain in my
conditions, and nothing too expensive. I am willing to group my
purchases so I have 2 tanks of low light, 3 tanks of average light and 1
tank of high light. Each tank (or light category) should include 1
foreground plant and 1 floating plant. I would like to carry a few
exotic plants, but I need to clearly identify them as such.

With the expertise in this group, I realize this is not a very exciting
post to answer, but it will benefit many people just being introduced to
aquatic plants ). I did try to research this myself, but had minimal
success, and even less confidence in my findings, so I am looking for
your experience for guidance.


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"Insert witty comment here."
-John