Aquariums: New Tank – do I need real plants?

You can still add plants. Sand is the best substrate imo.

You dont need live plants, but they take some work of your mind (cleaning the water) and they look better than plastic ones. Seeing your tank, its completely fine, just add some taller plants for fish to actually hide in, it looks really bright. Floating plants would be nice, too.

You don’t need real plants, they’re just nicer looking and help with absorbing nitrates and waste. I only just started keeping live plants within the last year and there’s a genuine enjoyment in watching them grow

If plastic plants aren’t a thing still then I question my local PetSmart decision to stock them.

Water column feeding plants are easy to keep with any substrate, you can even glue them onto your hardscape.

Real plants help with nutrient control, they compete with algae for the available nutrients. You can skip them entirely if you want, that’s what my grandfather does. Personally though I prefer real plants.

They’re not needed, but they’re pretty, beneficial for the tank, and a lot of them are pretty easy to care for. It’s also just nice to watch them grow, makes me feel proud

Plants are very beneficial to a tank by “eating wadte”. Also plastic plants seem to always get ugly with algae over time. Unless you keep animals that eat life plants, Id always go with life plants.

You do not need real plants and while they are helpful as well as pretty they can also be messy. They eat up nitrates which is nice but they are also a source of organic material in the tank. Sometimes there’s too much hype and too many plant based things marketed/sold to folks with tanks who don’t need heavy duty ferts or active substrates, etc.,

I have a lot of plants and I also have a tank where I only have phases of being able to add plants that float but there’s a crayfish in there that shakes and snips plants for fun. I’ve never had an issue with remotely high nitrates when that tank had no plants. Only a reading of 5 because I keep his tank pretty clean. With plants they actually need more nitrates and I don’t dose ferts to increase nitrates to a certain level that’s far behind me what my tank ever runs at and I still grow plants until the cray makes them into confetti. I actually started my second tank so I could have cute plants haha. You can cycle a tank with plants and many do that but I much prefer to cycle without them, and leave the light off, and then add them in after. I find it to be cleaner in more ways than one and I also like letting my plants adjust to submerged life out of a new tank and planting them when they are not going to melt all over. Melty plants can feed heterotrophic bacteria and I just try to avoid both algae and bacteria blooms. New tanks get messy as they adjust and balance and diatoms usually come into play- I try to avoid the uglies as much as I can.

If you add plants you can do so at any time and sand is just fine. Many popular easy plants don’t even get their roots planted in the substrate. With heavy root feeders you can use root tabs which ppl who have the plant substrates also usually do. You may not need one but there are lots of easy all in one fertilizers too. It’s super common that through finding the balance of nutrients and light that people end up growing all kinds of algae.

You can also get some floating plants like hornwort or float water wisteria or water sprite in your tank. All are wonderful cover for fish and are easy but what’s easy in one tank isn’t in the next, I love those 3 though. True floating plants are also an option, many are adorable and have drippy roots fish can use for cover. When you don’t have plants on the bottom of the tank you don’t have to worry about anything being shaded. It’s a nice start and floaters are great at taking up nitrates. I like having a mix of fast growers in the tank if I also have slow growers which many easy/low tech plants are. A lower level light or nutrients can also mean plants don’t grow super quickly. There’s a blessing in that often but not if the plants start getting weird algae lol.

Hope this was useful and don’t feel bad if you don’t add plants but don’t be afraid to try one out either- just don’t go heavy on adding tons of excess nutrients or organic debris to the tank to avoid potential headaches.