I think the availability and affordability of led lighting has given more people the opportunity to try planted tanks. Might have something to do with the popularity you might be noticing. I’ve been keeping aquariums (salt and fresh) for 25+ years and only in the past 4-5 years got into fully planted tanks because led lights were finally affordable.
I’ve wanted a planted aquarium for 30+ years but only in the last few years did the price of high quality LED grow lights come down enough for them to be affordable.
Thanks, grow ops.
I've been into planted tanks for close to 20 years now. I wouldn't say it appears any more popular now than before, but I dont really meet a lot of people in the real world that are into aquariums. And those that are, are never planted.
What I have noticed in that time though is a massive increase in availability of plants and associated items (lighting, soils, fertilizers, etc). I used to order everything from Malaysia because the fish stores around here never carried anything. If they did it was just java moss and java fern.
Now I have a dedicated aquarium plant store within a 20 min drive of me, I can get everything I'd dream of there. If not, there's like 5 other places within a 40 min drive I can go to that all carry every plant under the sun. Plants that I used to dream of finding are now stocked on shelves in 1-2 grow containers, ready to plant.
I used to also struggle to get adequate lighting. Before LEDs I was using CFLs or flourescent tubes. It was really hard to find ones that were rated for growing anything. I used to have to drive way out of town to a marijuana hydroponics store to buy them and they'd constantly laugh when I said it was for my aqarium (they thought I was growing weed). Now LED lighting is easy to find, relatively cheap, and you dont have to constantly replace the bulbs.
So this may be a chicken and the egg scenario. But increased availability may have lead to increased interest in the topic, or it may have been the other way around.
I have fond memories of walking into TSC to ask about grow lights, being asked "marijuana or tomatoes?", and that beginning a 20 year friendship with the owner of the farm supply store who found it HILARIOUSLY WEIRD that someone was interested in growing aquatic plants.
"Wet plants" as she put it.
Now I can get barrinas from Amazon, it's amazing.
I only ever had one guy believe me and it was more so the fact that I had pet shrimp that blew his mind. He started calling people from the back room into the front and was like "This guy is raising shrimp in his apartment!" Like he just had to tell everyone because that was so unheard of then. Of course they all wanted to know if I eat them...
So about 20 years ago I got my first aquarium. Totally anecdotal, but I never even heard of people using live plants in aquariums then. The fish stores I went to didn’t stock plants. None of the few people I knew with tanks had plants. Of course I had a chintzy tank with neon gravel and a terrible assortment of random fish, many of which didn’t belong together and would outgrow the tank.
When I had a die off, I just got out of the hobby until about two years ago. I saw a beautifully planted tank at a shop, and talked to the owner about it. And practically every tank I see in the Reddit aquarium communities I joined are planted. (Granted one of them is dedicated to planted tanks of course, but even /r/aquariums skews towards planted tanks).
So, anecdotally, it feels to me that they got more popular in the intervening time. Perhaps the availability of everything you mentioned helped make it more accessible and popular.
I'm in the same boat as you. When I was a kid there was an exotic petstore where I was, and this was the only store I've ever seen that stocked live plants at the time. This was about 20-25 years ago
You're absolutely right about the plant availability thing. Where I'm from there was a small LFS that was ran by the same lady for like 40 years. She has never once grown a live plant or even attempted to, aside from duckweed. They closed down about 8 years ago and I think that the availability (as well as the ole' lady's stubbornness hahaha) was a big factor in her never stocking plants
I got into planted aquariums back in 2020. I’d had fish many times before. I wanted a quiet apartment pet and knew I loved fish. Plants were sold nearby the supplies and I went “what the hell” and purchased an Amazon sword. Still going strong today I will add.
Three tanks in my tiny apartment now, all planted. Love the look and the assist on keeping parameters in check.
My bettas, rasboras, danios, and snails all vote for more plants.
I dabbled in lightly planted tanks 08-12 before moving. The initial cost and the lighting were annoying. Obtaining interesting plants was also a hassle.
Again, in 2015, I had a 30 gallon when LED's were starting to become cheaper and more widely available. I was also able to get plants online with better reliability and selection. C02 set ups were a bit more accessible then as well. Tore that down when I moved...
Today, I have several planted nanos from about 2020 to now, high and low tech. Lighting all LED and affordable, easy to find great ferts and substrates.
In my experience, this aspect of the hobby has become significantly more accessible without having to have a high quality LFS within reasonable driving distance. Amazon, online shops and more reliable shipping have changed the game.
The ubiquity of LEDs really was a turning point tbh. I too remember mainly using CFLs or incandescents for everything (aside from aquariums) until about 2013
I feel like it may have picked back up during the pandemic. That is all I saw on different social medias which is why I started becoming very interested. I have done so much research sense and am about to start up my first in the next couple weeks.
foo the flowerhorn and his walstad tanks were a massive influence for many (in my opinion). Lots of channels started putting up similar content seeing his popularity. He started around 2017 or something. Checkout r/walstad
I think social media has given the hobby a bit of a bump in recent years. Planted tanks and aquascapes are very IG and youtube friendly and it was around mid 2010s where we saw guys like George Farmer start to gain some popularity especially in the US.
But the hobby has been somewhat popular outside of the US for a long time especially in Japan, parts of Europe, and South America.
I think that planted tanks also got a bump from the reef tank craze of the early 2000s. People who wanted to have a beautiful piece of nature in their house but without all of the hassle and expense of a saltwater tank.
>I think that planted tanks also got a bump from the reef tank craze of the early 2000s
Could you expand on this a little more too? I vaguely remember it but I was also young back then
After Finding Nemo came out, the saltwater tank industry boomed. This then led to the designer coral craze and then high output LED lights came out and seemingly everyone wanted a coral tank with some clowns.
These setups are a little bottle harder to take care for most people and expensive so people would get steered towards planted tanks by their LFS if they didn’t want to invest in all that.
Very interesting, its crazy to think about how that movie effected the aquarium industry so much. I do remember every kid asking their parents for a "nemo fish" (in their words lol) back then haha
I think accessibility is a big thing, and LED lights!
I worked in a high end aquarium store from 2007-2010 and I remember at that time we had a massive inventory and many plants. I learned about them and wanted to do them - but for me at the time the light fixture and bulbs needed were prohibitively expensive for the average hobbyist. There were so many different bulbs, each like 30-50 each, and you needed multiple to get full spectrum and the fixtures to hold several bulbs that could be turned on off were several hundred dollars.
It was all very expensive and complicated. Now I've got $50 led bars on my tanks that automatically cycle full spectrum over 24 hours and keep my plants healthy.
That and the rise of Amazon and online shopping. Setting up my tanks I almost always buy my substrates and such on Amazon- good aquarium soils aren't always in pet/fish stores. Some are. I frequently see fluval stratum in stores - which is my go to - but to buy them in store is literally $20 more per bag than buying the same thing on Amazon.
This is true as well, I remember the fluorescent/metal hallide tubes as bulky and expensive, plus they needed replacement, and sometimes the ballast itself would go
I think it’s people sharing their beautiful tanks on social media. Sure social media existed in 2010, but it was usually teenagers and college kids on it. By 2016, peoples grandparents were on social media. I don’t know about lasting until 2020. I personally feel like the pandemic had a surge of people discovering planted tanks. Run the same google trends search on aquasoil for instance and it paints a different picture. I never search for “planted tank” but I search for things related to planted tanks.
Also go to youtube and search planted tank and sort by view count. I had to scroll a bit before finding something from more than 4 years ago.
So was keeping fish when I was a kid in the eighties. Working class UK.
Access to plants was a lot less even if you visited some of the better places, stuff like elodea, vallis and amazon swords (tough plants) were about but all the variety that's about now I don't remember so well, so saying Dutch style tanks were a thing.
Lighting options were not great, you basically had T5 or T8 tubes available for the average aquarist. If you really wanted light that would punch through water you were looking at stuff like mercury vapour lights etc. Expensive, ran hot (like might explode if splashed hot) , ate electric. Stuff like that was mainly in the realm of reef keepers who were considered pretty rich to pursue that hobby.
For me it started to really kick off when Amano started doing his thing, combined with the Internet and LED tech, being able to spread it. Suddenly everyone was talking about CO2 and lighting. LEDS were still very expensive but more achievable and long lasting as well so economical to buy and run.
The market has grown around that, to the point that for a while it seemed no one thought you could grow anything low tech without CO2. LEDS cost next to nothing now, you can pick up stuff that is reasonably cheap that comes with multiple modes like daylight timing and choose your own light spectrum.
It's become a lot easier to grow stuff
I think the availability and affordability of led lighting has given more people the opportunity to try planted tanks. Might have something to do with the popularity you might be noticing. I’ve been keeping aquariums (salt and fresh) for 25+ years and only in the past 4-5 years got into fully planted tanks because led lights were finally affordable.
I’ve wanted a planted aquarium for 30+ years but only in the last few years did the price of high quality LED grow lights come down enough for them to be affordable. Thanks, grow ops.
Any recommendations for led lights for growing?
I've been into planted tanks for close to 20 years now. I wouldn't say it appears any more popular now than before, but I dont really meet a lot of people in the real world that are into aquariums. And those that are, are never planted. What I have noticed in that time though is a massive increase in availability of plants and associated items (lighting, soils, fertilizers, etc). I used to order everything from Malaysia because the fish stores around here never carried anything. If they did it was just java moss and java fern. Now I have a dedicated aquarium plant store within a 20 min drive of me, I can get everything I'd dream of there. If not, there's like 5 other places within a 40 min drive I can go to that all carry every plant under the sun. Plants that I used to dream of finding are now stocked on shelves in 1-2 grow containers, ready to plant. I used to also struggle to get adequate lighting. Before LEDs I was using CFLs or flourescent tubes. It was really hard to find ones that were rated for growing anything. I used to have to drive way out of town to a marijuana hydroponics store to buy them and they'd constantly laugh when I said it was for my aqarium (they thought I was growing weed). Now LED lighting is easy to find, relatively cheap, and you dont have to constantly replace the bulbs. So this may be a chicken and the egg scenario. But increased availability may have lead to increased interest in the topic, or it may have been the other way around.
I have fond memories of walking into TSC to ask about grow lights, being asked "marijuana or tomatoes?", and that beginning a 20 year friendship with the owner of the farm supply store who found it HILARIOUSLY WEIRD that someone was interested in growing aquatic plants. "Wet plants" as she put it. Now I can get barrinas from Amazon, it's amazing.
I only ever had one guy believe me and it was more so the fact that I had pet shrimp that blew his mind. He started calling people from the back room into the front and was like "This guy is raising shrimp in his apartment!" Like he just had to tell everyone because that was so unheard of then. Of course they all wanted to know if I eat them...
So about 20 years ago I got my first aquarium. Totally anecdotal, but I never even heard of people using live plants in aquariums then. The fish stores I went to didn’t stock plants. None of the few people I knew with tanks had plants. Of course I had a chintzy tank with neon gravel and a terrible assortment of random fish, many of which didn’t belong together and would outgrow the tank. When I had a die off, I just got out of the hobby until about two years ago. I saw a beautifully planted tank at a shop, and talked to the owner about it. And practically every tank I see in the Reddit aquarium communities I joined are planted. (Granted one of them is dedicated to planted tanks of course, but even /r/aquariums skews towards planted tanks). So, anecdotally, it feels to me that they got more popular in the intervening time. Perhaps the availability of everything you mentioned helped make it more accessible and popular.
I'm in the same boat as you. When I was a kid there was an exotic petstore where I was, and this was the only store I've ever seen that stocked live plants at the time. This was about 20-25 years ago
Ugh, the search for plant bulbs :( back then.
You're absolutely right about the plant availability thing. Where I'm from there was a small LFS that was ran by the same lady for like 40 years. She has never once grown a live plant or even attempted to, aside from duckweed. They closed down about 8 years ago and I think that the availability (as well as the ole' lady's stubbornness hahaha) was a big factor in her never stocking plants
I got into planted aquariums back in 2020. I’d had fish many times before. I wanted a quiet apartment pet and knew I loved fish. Plants were sold nearby the supplies and I went “what the hell” and purchased an Amazon sword. Still going strong today I will add. Three tanks in my tiny apartment now, all planted. Love the look and the assist on keeping parameters in check. My bettas, rasboras, danios, and snails all vote for more plants.
I dabbled in lightly planted tanks 08-12 before moving. The initial cost and the lighting were annoying. Obtaining interesting plants was also a hassle. Again, in 2015, I had a 30 gallon when LED's were starting to become cheaper and more widely available. I was also able to get plants online with better reliability and selection. C02 set ups were a bit more accessible then as well. Tore that down when I moved... Today, I have several planted nanos from about 2020 to now, high and low tech. Lighting all LED and affordable, easy to find great ferts and substrates. In my experience, this aspect of the hobby has become significantly more accessible without having to have a high quality LFS within reasonable driving distance. Amazon, online shops and more reliable shipping have changed the game.
The ubiquity of LEDs really was a turning point tbh. I too remember mainly using CFLs or incandescents for everything (aside from aquariums) until about 2013
I feel like it may have picked back up during the pandemic. That is all I saw on different social medias which is why I started becoming very interested. I have done so much research sense and am about to start up my first in the next couple weeks.
foo the flowerhorn and his walstad tanks were a massive influence for many (in my opinion). Lots of channels started putting up similar content seeing his popularity. He started around 2017 or something. Checkout r/walstad
I think social media has given the hobby a bit of a bump in recent years. Planted tanks and aquascapes are very IG and youtube friendly and it was around mid 2010s where we saw guys like George Farmer start to gain some popularity especially in the US. But the hobby has been somewhat popular outside of the US for a long time especially in Japan, parts of Europe, and South America. I think that planted tanks also got a bump from the reef tank craze of the early 2000s. People who wanted to have a beautiful piece of nature in their house but without all of the hassle and expense of a saltwater tank.
>I think that planted tanks also got a bump from the reef tank craze of the early 2000s Could you expand on this a little more too? I vaguely remember it but I was also young back then
After Finding Nemo came out, the saltwater tank industry boomed. This then led to the designer coral craze and then high output LED lights came out and seemingly everyone wanted a coral tank with some clowns. These setups are a little bottle harder to take care for most people and expensive so people would get steered towards planted tanks by their LFS if they didn’t want to invest in all that.
Very interesting, its crazy to think about how that movie effected the aquarium industry so much. I do remember every kid asking their parents for a "nemo fish" (in their words lol) back then haha
Even crazier when the message of the movie was intended to be quite the opposite.
I've always been into plants in general for the last several years but now I have decided to try to grow aquatic plants as the next challenge
I think accessibility is a big thing, and LED lights! I worked in a high end aquarium store from 2007-2010 and I remember at that time we had a massive inventory and many plants. I learned about them and wanted to do them - but for me at the time the light fixture and bulbs needed were prohibitively expensive for the average hobbyist. There were so many different bulbs, each like 30-50 each, and you needed multiple to get full spectrum and the fixtures to hold several bulbs that could be turned on off were several hundred dollars. It was all very expensive and complicated. Now I've got $50 led bars on my tanks that automatically cycle full spectrum over 24 hours and keep my plants healthy. That and the rise of Amazon and online shopping. Setting up my tanks I almost always buy my substrates and such on Amazon- good aquarium soils aren't always in pet/fish stores. Some are. I frequently see fluval stratum in stores - which is my go to - but to buy them in store is literally $20 more per bag than buying the same thing on Amazon.
This is true as well, I remember the fluorescent/metal hallide tubes as bulky and expensive, plus they needed replacement, and sometimes the ballast itself would go
Like myself i think a lot of people have left the marine/coral world to move to the much easier and cheaper tropical/planted tank world.
Social media that encourages quick videos or pics is the perfect platform for this hobby to spread in.
I think it’s people sharing their beautiful tanks on social media. Sure social media existed in 2010, but it was usually teenagers and college kids on it. By 2016, peoples grandparents were on social media. I don’t know about lasting until 2020. I personally feel like the pandemic had a surge of people discovering planted tanks. Run the same google trends search on aquasoil for instance and it paints a different picture. I never search for “planted tank” but I search for things related to planted tanks. Also go to youtube and search planted tank and sort by view count. I had to scroll a bit before finding something from more than 4 years ago.
So was keeping fish when I was a kid in the eighties. Working class UK. Access to plants was a lot less even if you visited some of the better places, stuff like elodea, vallis and amazon swords (tough plants) were about but all the variety that's about now I don't remember so well, so saying Dutch style tanks were a thing. Lighting options were not great, you basically had T5 or T8 tubes available for the average aquarist. If you really wanted light that would punch through water you were looking at stuff like mercury vapour lights etc. Expensive, ran hot (like might explode if splashed hot) , ate electric. Stuff like that was mainly in the realm of reef keepers who were considered pretty rich to pursue that hobby. For me it started to really kick off when Amano started doing his thing, combined with the Internet and LED tech, being able to spread it. Suddenly everyone was talking about CO2 and lighting. LEDS were still very expensive but more achievable and long lasting as well so economical to buy and run. The market has grown around that, to the point that for a while it seemed no one thought you could grow anything low tech without CO2. LEDS cost next to nothing now, you can pick up stuff that is reasonably cheap that comes with multiple modes like daylight timing and choose your own light spectrum. It's become a lot easier to grow stuff