Many believe that if you have an aquarium, you have to put fish in it. But a plant filled aquarium can be a lovely addition to a home, even if it has no fish. Some aquarium owners will choose to buy artificial plants because they’ve had bad luck attempting to keep real plants alive. But preserving the health of your plants is relatively simple if you recognize what their likes and needs are. Here are a few of the chief reasons that aquarium plants end up dying or not thriving well.

Failing to provide enough light for your plant. Light is extremely important for a plant. You can provide aquarium plant with buckets of food and nutrients, but if you don’t give it enough light, it won’t last long. Now these days, most of the tanks that you find will come with a light attached to the tank top. Alternatively, it will come with pre-drilled holes that have been setup to allow you to install a light relatively easily. If not, most acrylic tanks will allow you to drill your own holes and set up your own lighting. Of course, another perfectly good alternative is simply to place your aquarium on the south side of your apartment or house, near a window where it will be sure to get plenty of light.

Not paying attention to your plant’s roots. If the plant is a new one, the brown leaves may be nothing more than the plant adjusting to it’s new home. Most plants experience some sort of shock when transplanted from one place to another. It’s nothing unusual. Just give it a bit of time to adjust and it should do fine. However, if your plant has been doing well for a while and all of a sudden the leaves begin to turn brown and fall off, it may be a simple matter of the roots having come loose. Roots often come loose in aquariums, especially if you have rowdy fish that love to dig. In this case, simply replant or reposition the plant making sure that the roots are well covered and secure.

Plant crowding. Plants need room to grow. In a crowded aquarium, you have too many plants fighting for too few resources. Give your plants plenty of room to grow by providing it with a large enough aquarium to accommodate it’s future growth spurts. If it starts to get a bit unwieldy, it also helps to trim it every once in a while to control it’s growth.

The wrong plant in the wrong environment. Plants are living things. And like all living things they do better in some environments than in others. You may have fallen in love with the most perfect, beautiful tropical plant to your eyes. But, if you live in the northern part of Alaska, chances are your plant is not going to survive. Many times the cause of a dying plant can be traced directly back to it not being right for the environment it has been moved to.

Many times the poor performance of a plant is where it was purchased. It’s not unusual to discover that most animal and fish stores are set up to deal with animals, not plants. To many of them, plants are simply a side line. If you notice that a store has only a few types of plants for sale and a rather small stock, it’s a good guess that they aren’t very knowledgeable about the types of plants that will do well in your environment. Also, if most of the store’s plants  are yellowing or brown, or if the plants seem to be not well cared for, it’s probably best to continue to look elsewhere. The last thing that you want to do is to introduce a diseased plant into your aquarium.
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