Microsorum Java Fern and Hornwort | Easy Low Light Aquarium Plants

I never have had success with keeping aquarium plants alive, but this is the easiest plant I have ever had. The hornwort arrived in rough condition, mostly brown, smelled pretty bad, and dropped a lot of leaves for the first few weeks. I just threw it in my tank and added liquid fertilizer with each weekly water change and kept my plant light on for about ten hours a day. Eventually the plant greened up and began growing. I don’t have a C02 set up, but I imagine if I did I would have to begin trimming the plant. The plant came with snails, which all died while in transit. The worst thing that the plant came with was duckweed. At first I thought it was a cool free plant, but I was wrong. Duckweed grows crazy fast and most of my maintenance to the tank comes from removing duckweed. Would buy again though, I think hornwort is a pretty nice looking plant and it grows enough to make a small tank look like a jungle.

Short version the plants arrived half dead but I still put them in my tank and killed all my fish.So I’ve recently decided to get back into fish keeping and have had my tank going for about two months when I received these Hornworts. I had 4 Cory cats and two other varieties of plants that have been in the tank for two months. When the plants arrived they were still half green but a little sad looking, I rinsed them in a bucket to try and get any unwanted critters and dead leaves off and then planted in my tank. Within 4 days the plants completely died and started dropping all of their needle leaves in the tank and clouded the tank, so I did a water change and tried to get as many of the leaves out as I possibly could. 2 days later, and this is most likely completely coincidental, I had a major algae bloom occur, the tank does sit by a closed blind window and I treat the water regularly with algae remover. At this point I did another water change and noticed two of my fish were pale looking, by that night one was dead and the next morning the other had passed as well. 3 days after all of this I notice what I thought was ick on the last two fish and immediately begin treating with medicine and by raising the water temperature. Now I have never seen anything like this or something grow this fast but after two days the treatments had done nothing and there were like full grown worm like parasites on my fish and then they also died. I still have no clue what it was, but for $13 worth of plants I lost $35 in fish and my $150 tank setup is down for a month at the least so that I can properly clean and cycle in hopes that I permanently get rid of whatever that was.

I was skeptical about the quality of this plant upon receiving it. Due to it being shipped in the wintertime, at least a quarter of the shipment had died and turned brown in the box. I removed the dead portions gave it a soak in snail killing solution, rinsed it, and put it in my 55 gallon goldfish tank. I had to remove more dead and dying portions about two weeks later. Since then the plants have thrived and at least doubled in volume, all pretty green growth. My goldfish seem to like resting in it (I let mine free float) and they’ve developed a taste for it and nibble on it instead of my other plants (what I was actually hoping for). It’s a hardy and fast growing plant, in fact I had to remove about half of my hornwort from the tank today because of its rapid growth.

Java fern was nice and healthy. 2 out of 3 hornwort plants were dead on arrival. Yellow and brown and shedding like crazy. I put them in the aquarium to see if they would come to life but had to throw them out after 24 hrs.

My Betta loves a lush forest of floating plants and hogwort has worked well, but tends to shed. I wasn't happy with the choices at the local fish store or big box pet stores, so I took a chance and ordered these. They arrived in good shape, with only a little die-off, much less than I expected, actually. I did a partial water change and washed off some residue (soil) and placed them in the tank. The fish loves it. I also liked that the branches are thicker and more lush than others I've seen. Would definitely order again!

Updating my review after 2 days of planting in aquarium. The plant I received was very good and healthy. It had around 6 stems with all green leaves. I saw the positive reviews and thought to have this in my aquarium.The quality of the plant was more than what I expected. There were no brown leaves at all. No snails. Just had to rinse in water before putting into the aquarium. On 1st day I gave one 4 rating because the leaves are not wide open. They seem to be like pressed as you can see in the images may be because the plant was in the bag (bag was covered in a box though), but after 2 days The plant is back to normal and is growing crazy. I can see the growth difference in just 2 days (see pic) and it gives a good feeling of the aquarium, my tetras and Platies are happy with it. Updating my rating to 5. Definitely recommend this.

First, they are no where near the size/amount that is shown in the picture. Second, as you can see in the photo, the Hornwort appears to be dead on arrival. There is no way I am putting this in my aquarium. If I can get the gunk out of the roots of the fern, I may plant that but if not, this has been nothing but a waste of money. They are listed as Easy Lowlight Aquarium Plants but they obviously came from a pond. I may update in due time IF I can find any of the Hornwort to be salvageable after putting it in something to see if anything will grow with adding ferts.