Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I know the question has been posted before, but after doing a search...I came up empty handed.

What aquatic plants are safe for my snaps to have with them?

Or better yet, what aquatic plants should I stay away from?

I looked at Petsmart and a few other stores, and most of the aquatic plants they have seem to be safe for fish...

I am not sure what it is called but it looks like the stuff in Dinobot711's resetup picture just below.My snapper used to eat that over fish.

I think the plant is a type of anachris. I got some of it from a pond store and collected some of it from a lake.

I put both Elodea and duck weed with my snapper. It didn't last long. He ate it all in less than a week. I gave up with plants in my snapper's enclosure, they never make it!

Yes. He’s supposed to eat them. It‘s a major part of a well-balanced diet. Snappers are not carnivores; they‘re omnivores. Consider yourself lucky that you found plants that he wanted to eat—and start giving them to him again.

Well, apparently my kids are the exception. The plants I put in are still there, it looks like they taste tested a few but spit it out. It could be the fact that they haven't been fed veggies too much since I got them, and the pet shop that had them just fed them crix.

They're not an exception; they're just young.

In many species of turtles (and there are various theories about this) hatchlings are very carnivorous. This changes as they grow; adults of some species can be almost entirely herbivorous.

But it's a good idea to have plants around all the time. The cover is good, and, when they're ready, they can test out a little nibble now and then.

Believe me I know that snappers are omnivorous. I've been keeping them for over 10 years. It is just not worth spending 5 bucks for a few sprigs of an aquatic plant that is eaten in a few minutes. I just through greens into his tank now.

My mistake. It souded like you just stopped giving them any kind of plants.

And you raise a sore point with me: the markup on aquarium plants is nuts!

I have ponds near my house where, if you were diligent and made a real professional operation out of it, you could make several thousand dollars a year just by collecting, washing, and batching horsetails, elodea, and other plants that people buy in the stores.

Yes, I understand that the really special stuff, like Brazilian swordplants and others, are raised professionally and take a lot of time and work.

But elodea does not. Figure out the right requirements, set up a greenhouse full of tanks, and elodea grows... well, like a weed! I’ve had it take over aquariums where I didn’t want it to.

And then stores charge an arm and a leg for a bunch of plants. Somebody—the store, the middleman, somebody—is making a killing on them.

I know that that’s a facile way of putting it, but let me say this: there are a bunch of potential live-plant customers out there who have chosen to not pay that kind of money for plants. That’s one of the factors behind the lifelike-plant industry (and they’re getting better at it all the time).