Pothos is a common house plant that can also be used in your aquarium.
This guide at Aquarium Blueprints will explain the benefits it has on your water parameters as well as provide a tutorial on how to add it to your fish tank.
Quick Navigation:
- The many names of Pothos
- Why Pothos is the best emergent plant for your aquarium
- What are the cons of using Pothos in fish tanks?
- How to clean Pothos for your fish tank
- How to propagate Pothos
- How to put Pothos in your fish tank
The many names of Pothos
Pothos goes by the scientific name of Epipremnum Aureum. As far as nicknames go, you may also see it refer to as Ceylon Creeper, Devil’s Ivy, Devil’s Vine, Hunter’s Robe, Ivy Arum, Money Plant, Silver Vine, Solomon Islands Ivy and Taro Vine.
There are also different looking types of the same plant. The varieties include Cebu Blue, Golden (which is the most common), Jessenia, Manjula, Marble Queen, Neon in addition to Pearls and Jade.
Why Pothos is the best emergent plant for your aquarium
Emergent plants (which includes Climbing Fig, Lucky Bamboo, Split-leaf Philodendron, Umbrella Papyrus as well as the aforementioned Pothos) can grow with its roots underwater in addition to having its stems and leafs above the water line. Out of this category, we vastly prefer using Pothos due to it being hard to kill, relatively in affordable price, super fast to grow.
Extremely hardy
Pothos has a reputation of being one of the most hardy house plants. This is because it is extremely tough to kill, even if you neglect to water for an extended period of time. Not to mention that Pothos will grow with just ambient lighting from the light fixture in your room as well as the sunlight from your windows.
Consume a lot of ammonia and nitrates
Pothos is also great at consuming ammonia and nitrates from the water column in your fish tank. This is because it can grow extremely long roots that will reach all the way to the bottom of your tank (in our case, our aquarium is two feet in height). As a result, it is more efficient than plants with shorter roots when it comes to absorbing nutrients.
The plant can also grow extremely fast once it established itself in your tank. Most aquarium plants that are underwater require carbon dioxide to start growing at a quick pace. Therefore, they have to rely on the gas exchange between your tank water and the surrounding air to get CO2. Since the gas exchange is relatively slow and don’t produce much carbon dioxide in the tank water even with an air stone, a lot of fish keepers use CO2 injections to speed up the growth.
Since the leaves of the Pothos is already exposed to the carbon dioxide in the air, it will grow much faster and consume more nutrients, including ammonia and nitrates, when compared to the underwater plants. So, if you want to keep your tank water clean for your fish and/or want to do less water changes, then we highly recommend getting Pothos over every other emergent and submerged plants.
Remove toxins from the air in your house
In addition to keeping your tank water clean, Pothos will also purify the air in your house. Among the toxins it can remove from your air includes benzene, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, toluene and xylen.
So, if you decide to buy a bunch of Pothos, you can put a cutting or two in your aquarium and then spread out the rest to other rooms in our house if you want to improve the quality of air indoors.
Decorate your tank and its surroundings
Pothos is a vining plant that will keep getting longer and producing more leaves. As a result, you should be able to come up with some creative ways to add to the aesthetics of your fish tanks. You could let it hang out on the sides, make it grow upwards to the wall and more.
What are the cons?
There are a few issues when it comes to using Pothos. The most important of which is that this plant contains insoluble calcium oxalate crystals. If ingested, the plants will cause discomfort to your digestive tract and even your upper airway. So it is best to keep the plants away from small children as well as your dogs and cats. If you or a loved one somehow consume Pothos, seek medical attention as soon as possible.
The other potential problem with having Pothos in your fish tank is that it may out-compete your underwater aquarium plants. As we previously stated, Pothos can grow a lot faster when compared to underwater plants and, therefore, use up more nutrients from the water column. This is especially true for smaller size tanks.
If you noticed your underwater plants not doing as well after adding Pothos, we recommend pruning the Pothos if you have a vine that has multiple stems and leafs growing out of it.
How to clean Pothos before adding it to your fish tank
If you got a bunch of Pothos that is growing on soil in a pot, we recommend removing the plant and soil from the pot. Afterwards, you have to separate the soil from the roots. If it is too tangled up, you can try dipping the soil in water in a bucket to loosen things up. Since Pothos grows quickly, you really only need one cutting to start in your aquarium as it won’t take long for a vine to develop.
If the Pothos you have is already developing long vines, you can also propagate a cutting for use in your fish tank.
How to propagate
To propagate your plant, you first have to locate the node, which should be brown in color, on the stem. You can then cut the stem using a scissor slightly below (say around 1/8 of an inch) the node at around a 45 degree angle. The node will eventually start to develop a root in your fish tank.
How to put Pothos in your fish tank
Before putting Pothos in your tank, we recommend thoroughly rinsing the cutting from top to bottom to remove any leftover soil, particles and pesticides. Once you are done doing that, we recommend using an aquarium-safe suction cup that is designed to hold cables and/or airline tubing, to hold the stem of the plant. The aforementioned nodes should be below the waterline while your leaves should above water.
Recap
We find that Pothos is an amazing house plant that will help consume ammonia and nitrate from the waters of your fish tank. It is a must have if you don’t have any underwater live plants in your aquarium.
If you do have live plants, you may want to try a small cutting of Pothos in the beginning to see if there could be any negative effects to your underwater plants.
