Aquatic plants, underwater and afloat.
These are plants that live in the water - the rooted and attached greenery that builds an aquascape, and the floaters that shade a tank or pond. Here are 15 profiles sorted by how they grow, with the light, water and honest difficulty of each. Most are beginner-friendly; a few need strong light and CO2, and a few are invasive - all flagged.
🪴 Aquascape & aquarium plants Rooted or attached to hardscape - the plants that build an underwater garden.
🍃 Floating plants (tank & pond) Live on the surface, feed from the water and shade the tank - great nutrient sponges.
🔎 Looks like a plant - but isn't
Three of the most popular "aquarium plants" are not plants at all. We keep them out of the catalog above because it would not be honest to call them plants - here is what they actually are.
- Marimo "moss balls" - not a moss and not a plant, but a rare form of green algae (Aegagropila linnaei) that grows into a velvety sphere. You care for it like a plant, but botanically it belongs to the algae.
- Seaweed & kelp - all algae too, in their own kingdom, not the plant kingdom. What looks like leaves, stems and roots are lookalike structures, not the real thing.
- Coral - not a plant or an algae, but an animal - a colony of tiny relatives of jellyfish and anemones. The "flowers" are living polyps. If you keep a reef tank, corals are livestock with animal husbandry needs, not plant care - a completely separate hobby.
Start with the beginner-proof trio - anubias, java fern and java moss - which grow tied to wood or rock in low light with no CO2. For dry land, the fern catalog shares the same shade-and-moisture philosophy.