plants

[bamboofish]

Help,
what grows better plants, a fine or coarse substrate, mine is 1/8 to 1/2 in. pebble???

[babblefish1960]

Rocks don't grow plants at all. You will need to consider feeding them something, as they don't grow from nothing. A medium gravel works best at holding them down, while not compacting, and coarse gravel will trap all sorts of crud. I personally use soil under the substrate, tons of malaysian trumpet snails, and lots of fish.

[artw]

The gravel size you indicated should suffice as long as  its deep enough to provide a good root hold (usually about 2")   Ideally we are more looking towards the ability to provide something good in the gravel for plants, most commonly in the form of iron or otherwise substrate based fertilizer - such as Fluorite but it appears as if its a bit late for fluorite in your case.  If you are just growing regular plants with regular lights you can probably skip adding anything to the gravel but it never hurts.

water helps too, I am suprised babble didnt add that LOL

[babblefish1960]

water helps too, I am suprised babble didnt add that LOL

Arggh, I knew I forgot something, that would explain quite a few things, I didn't mention lights either, perhaps I was making an assumption, yeah that's it.

Art offers some good suggestions there, what sort of plants and lights do you have? Don't forget the water, the fish seem to enjoy the plants much better if they are in water.