How To Anchor Live Aquarium Plants

Live aquarium plants make an attractive addition to any home fish tank, and they help to keep the water clean and healthy for your fish by removing nitrates, too. Aquatic plants come in various forms, such as bunch, bare-root, potted, and tissue-cultured, and how you plant them is crucial if they are to stay put and not end up floating randomly around your aquarium.

In this guide, we explain how to anchor live aquarium plants to keep them safely rooted at the bottom of your tank or wherever else you want to grow them.

Floating Plants

If you keep fish species that tend to dig around the plant roots or tug on the leaves, you might want to consider using floating plants instead of those that need planting in the substrate. Floating plants can generally be grown in the substrate or allowed to drift freely with the flow in your aquarium, deriving their nutritional requirements from nutrients in the water and from your aquarium lights.

Floating plant species make good plants for your betta fish, as they provide the perfect anchor point for a bubble nest and shelter for vulnerable fry.

Use Rocks and Pebbles

Until the plant's root system is well-established, there's a good chance that it can be dislodged by fish activities, foraging through the substrate or nibbling on the plant’s leaves.

To keep the plant in place, sink it a couple of inches into the substrate, make a small bank of gravel around the plant's base, and reinforce that with a few pebbles or small rocks.

The extra weight should be just enough to keep the plant in place and prevent it from floating away.

Tie the Plant to Driftwood or Rocks

An effective way to anchor some plant species, such as Java Fern and Anubias, is to tie them to pieces of driftwood or rocks.

Use a piece of fine thread or fishing line to tie the plant roots to a piece of wood or a rock. That’s a very effective way of keeping the plant in place and allows you to relocate it when you want to change things up in your tank. There’s no need to remove the thread; the plant roots will quickly grow over it.

I have several pieces of bogwood in my tank with Anubias plants tied to them with thread. When cleaning my tank, I can move the wood to vacuum underneath it without disturbing the plants, making it much easier to keep my substrate clean and remove potential pollutants.

Potted Plants

Most aquarium plants are supplied in small, plastic, slotted pots. The plants are grown in a special medium that's commonly called Rockwool. Potted plants are grown hydroponically in water and dissolved nutrients, rather than soil, and the Rockwool provides an anchor point for the plant while its roots grow. When you come to plant the specimen in your aquarium, you should remove the pot and most of the Rockwool first.

Remove as much of the Rockwool as possible from around the plant's roots, using your fingers or a pair of fine tweezers. Any remaining Rockwool that’s left clinging to the plant’s roots will help to anchor the plant in the substrate. Trim the plant roots to encourage new growth and carefully split the specimens into smaller plants.

Carefully push the plants about two inches into the substrate, and push a little mound of gravel back around the plant base to help keep the plant anchored securely.

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