# Planting heavily?



## perkyp (Mar 17, 2009)

Why do people say you should plant heavily from the beginning? What if I never want a heavily planted tank, but just a medium or lightly planted tank?


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## Seattle_Aquarist (Mar 7, 2008)

Hi perkyp,

Planting heavily, especially with fast growing stem plants, helps to absorb all the ammonia/nitrites/nitrates that occur naturally during the nitrogen cycle. Keeping the ammonia/nitrites/nitrates low helps minimize the growth of algae that could experience explosive growth otherwise . I use inexpensive stem plants and hornwort (Ceratophyllym demersum) which I allow to float.


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## Quetzalcoatl (Feb 13, 2009)

Pretty much what the previous poster said. The plant helps keep your water environment at control while your bacteria colonies build up. If you want to keep your tank lightly planted, then you want to either migrate your filter media from a well cycled tank and do frequent water changes (every day for first 2 weeks, every other day for 2 weeks after that, etc...)


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## davemonkey (Mar 29, 2008)

Quetzalcoatl said:


> Pretty much what the previous poster said. The plant helps keep your water environment at control while your bacteria colonies build up. If you want to keep your tank lightly planted, then you want to either migrate your filter media from a well cycled tank and do frequent water changes (every day for first 2 weeks, every other day for 2 weeks after that, etc...)


Yep, and you can also reduce your photoperiod and/or light intensity if you want less dense planting.


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## footballe (Feb 10, 2009)

how about soaking the aquasoil in water before scaping and planting like 1 week before hand ? full water change can be done in between this period.


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## Veloth (Jun 25, 2008)

footballe said:


> how about soaking the aquasoil in water before scaping and planting like 1 week before hand ? full water change can be done in between this period.


You can but there's no reason to that I know of.


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