Aquatic Plants and Goldfish for Your Water Lily Pool
While both goldfish and water plants can live without the other, neither will flourish unless a balance of both is maintained throughout your water lily pool. That is why it is crucial to pick the right aquatic plants for your pond or water lily garden.
Choosing Aquatics
As a beginner, the best way to choose plants is to leave the decision up to your water lily dealer. If you tell your dealer your pool size, they can give you a beautifully well-balanced selection to get you started.
Once you have tended your garden for a few years you will start to get some ideas of your own. This is when you can start making your personal decisions about what to plant depending on your taste.
What is Available?
There are a wide variety of plants available, although we will deal with only those that can be easily purchased at most major dealers within the United States. Rare plants have been omitted, as have those that only grow in a certain parts of the country. The listed plants are common to all parts of the country and will guarantee you can obtain plants that will thrive wherever you are. These plants help give oxygen to the water making sure the fish thrive -- they are known as oxygenators. Of the oxygenators, there are three main types: submerged aquatics, floating aquatics and border plants.
Submerged Aquatics
Most submerged plants do not require planting and can simply be dropped in the pool after twisting a piece of wire around the base of the stems to serve as ballast and hold the stalks upright. However, the plants will grow better if the stems are stuck into a small pot of heavy loam. A pot of just four or five inches will house up to six plants. For varieties like Vallisneria and Mare's-Tail, however, plants should be placed in boxes of loam and put on the pool floor.
The most common varieties of submerged plants include:
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Anacharis (Elodea canadensis)
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Cahomba -- Also known as Washington Grass, Fanwort, Water Shield
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Ludwigia -- Also called Swamp Loosestrife
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Mare's Tail (Hippuris vulgaris)
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Myriophyllum -- Also called Water-Milfoil
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Sagittaria
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Vallisneria spiralis -- Also known as Channel-Grass, Eel-Grass, Tape Grass. Probably the best oxygenator around.
This list is virtually all perennials. Perennials rarely need to be replaced and are cost effective.