Since the species diversity among aquatic plants is quite varied, even choosing the right plant species can take time when planning a new layout. Once the decision is made and the substrate and hardscape are also settled and prepared, you can venture to start planting. But how many portions of aquarium plants do you actually plan for? We offer some tips on this.

It depends on the sales form

In general, one and the same aquatic plant can be offered in different sales forms. In the early days of the aquarium hobby, bunch plants were very popular, especially for stem plants. These were usually a certain number of stems that had already grown submersed. It looks different with potted plants; these are (with a few exceptions) basically aquarium plants that nurseries cultivate in their emersed, above-water form. Here you can set the pure quantity for bunch plants and potted plants roughly equal. Finally, there are also in-vitro cups, which are also often available in two different sizes (normal and XL). The bigger the cup, the more contents are of course available.

Rule of thumb

As a rather rough guideline, you can set the portion of a bunch plant, a potted plant and a normal in-vitro cup roughly equal. With such a portion, you can plant an area of approx. 10 x 10 cm in the aquarium. Of course, you have to divide the aquatic plants up a little and also plant them with spacing between each other (about 3 cm). This is especially to be noted with ground cover plants and stem plants. You can find more information on this in our article on preparing aquarium plants.

The contents of an in-vitro XL cup correspond to roughly double such a portion, and calculated exactly even a little more (more like a factor of 2.5-2.6). Especially with larger aquariums, it is therefore worthwhile to work with the larger sterile cups in order to plant as much base area as possible at the lowest cost.

The "How many plants do I need?" calculator

To make it easier for you as a customer to calculate the quantity, for many aquatic plants you will find a corresponding calculator further down on the respective product page. Simply enter the desired area there (length x width in cm), and the calculator spits out suggestions of various sales forms that are best suited for planting the entered area.

The special case of epiphytes

The way of estimating quantities can sometimes be somewhat different with epiphytes such as anubias. Here, less a ground area is greened, but rather hardscape structures made of driftwood and stones. It is therefore more about a vertical orientation of the plant, that is, upward. Nevertheless, you can use roughly the same rule of thumb here. A portion then still corresponds to an area of approx. 10 x 10 cm. This area is not necessarily laid out horizontally, though; you can slant it or orient it vertically to roughly match the position of the hardscape