Five of the Best Plants for Reptile and Amphibian Enclosures

[Music] well hi there some of you noticed that not very long ago we built this tank we've done tank builds in the past and we plan to do a lot of awesome terrarium tank builds in the future because i love planted tanks there's just so much to love about them i love bioactive because they're low maintenance and you can just make them pretty by adding things like well live plants to them but i am not really all that into plants that are super difficult to take care of or that require a whole ton of crazy plant maintenance there are some people who are who are way into that kind of thing this video is not really for you i hope you enjoy it but it's not made for you this video is really more for people like me who want beautiful planted tanks but who aren't like huge plant experts a lot of my knowledge about which plants do well in vivaria pretty much just comes from trial and error i've lost a lot of plants over the years and i i keep kind of getting closer and closer to which ones do i really like which ones really work the best for my purposes and so that is why we have created this list of five of the best terrarium plants for beginners who aren't very good at plants like to thank our patrons at patreon who have provided the the funding that we need to be able to experiment with a lot more types of plants and to build cool tanks like this we're really looking forward to what we might be able to do on a grand scale here in the near future thanks to your support so thank you so much for being there for us first on our list is this one that's back behind me and that is the pothos honestly you know if you want a pretty plant in a tank that really will put up with anything you bought this is the ultimate for one thing they're very very easy to cultivate which means you know if you've got cuttings of pothos you just stick them in some water and they'll shoot out some roots and bam you've got new pothos so even if you're messing it up all the time you could be growing new ones and replacing them they're very fast growing which means that you can really you know make a lot of it in a hurry and you can plant them all over in in terraria they can grow in soil which is pretty normal for plant they can also grow just straight in water they'll shoot out roots down into the water and they can handle that which most plants just die in that sort of a situation but even if you let them dry out even if you let them dry out to the point that you look in there and you go oh that plant is just flopped over as soon as you water it it probably bounces right back the the reality is apotheos are going to be a lot hardier as far as water goes than any animals that you're going to have in that enclosure so as long as you're not killing your animals your plot those will probably be fine they also have very low light requirements this has been one of the hardest things for me with terrarium plants over the years is that uh sometimes they need more light than you can really provide in that tank and and pothos do really well even if there's hardly any light at all they've also got very broad leaves which are really great if you've got frogs or geckos because it gives them a big surface to climb on so in addition to looking nice they're also functionally very nice and they're also kind of a vining plant and those vines are the same way animals will be able to climb on them so they do more than just look nice there are a lot of pros to pothos but there are some cons as well they're kind of a large plant even the individual leaves are sort of big and they grow very quickly so they can quickly overwhelm smaller terraria especially if you're not ready to prune them back fairly often you are going to have to probably clip your pothos or they'll just over grow the whole thing and you'll just have a box full of pothos and they are so common that they're boring i mean we learned this when we made our first terrarium build which was just that people were like pothos why pothos well because pothos is awesome and easy and it was easy for us to get and they're everywhere they're great but they're also so common that a lot of people will be like boring next on our list is the spider wart which is a weird name for this plant but not the weirdest name because more commonly you will hear them referred to by their less culturally sensitive name of wandering jews i don't know why they're called this because to my knowledge they have no religion but they are a very very neat plant and they've got a lot of pros one of them is that they're very easy to cultivate this is just a cutting that i have of a spiderwort plant and you stick it in water they'll start growing roots and i've got them in tanks all over the place in fact i have so many of them now that when i cut them i'm like do i even bother to root them or do i just let them die makes me sad to let them die but i've got no place for them they grow like crazy did i mention they're fast growing they're very very fast growing which is nice because sometimes it takes a while for a tank that you've just built to really grow in to what it should be these will be there very very quickly sort of like pothos these can grow in water they grow better in soil and if you let them dry out they'll probably be okay probably not quite as okay as pothos but pretty darn okay this is a really difficult plant to kill because of over watering or underwatering they also have relatively low light requirements which is fantastic because you know you can almost always provide enough light for a low light plant but getting enough intense light without really just having a crazy amount of light in a terrarium can be difficult so some of the highlight plants are more difficult low light awesome and uh it's purple though i have i have noticed when i grow them under lower light a lot of times they don't come in quite as purple as this but it's purple which adds a little variety to your tank beautiful amazing plants they do have some cons though really just this one they grow really really fast and so you're going to have to trim them back often and when you trim them back you're going to notice they're going to grow from auxiliary meristems which just means you know they're sort of vining in one direction but if you cut off the the end of the vine from which they're growing they'll start to grow from little backups that they've got all over the place so you might end up going from one vine to mini vines they can uh they can take over very quickly if you don't maintain them they're easy to grow and that's really their only con next on our list is the heart leafed philodendron which this is a really cool plant you've definitely seen them before they're in a lot of ways a lot like pothos except smaller this one actually has some huge leaves pothole sleeves can get to be like this big or even bigger they can get enormous on a really big plant this is about as big i mean they'll get a little bigger but these guys you'll see them in my tanks the leaves stay pretty small compared to apotheos like the pothos though these are one that can grow in water they can grow in soil and you can let them dry out quite a bit and they'll be okay and they also do really well in low light conditions this is actually a heck of a lot like apothose just not apothecary a couple of cons one of them is they're not quite as hardy in my experience as the pothos but i mean that's not saying much almost nothing is as hardy as apotheos to be perfectly honest i'm just looking for cons here this is an amazing plant they will grow nicely for you but not quite as fast as a plateau they're just they're terrific they're terrific next on our list is the creeping fig this is actually one i i discovered a little later on but i really like them one thing i like about them is they've got much smaller leaves than than the other plants we've talked about especially the the pothos and the philodendron that's a pro endicon but it makes it so that they don't fill up your tank so much they're more just uh kind of there for for beauty they'll grow as a vining plant they'll grow right up onto your background and they'll really hold on so they'll grow all any sort of like sticks or rocks or anything in there these will grow right up onto them and look awesome they also come in a couple of variations this is the non-variegated which means it doesn't have any white in the leaves there's also a variegated variety of them they're basically exactly the same the same species and everything and so you can have multiple different looks for the creeping figs in your tank and yet the care is all the same and they're also fairly fast growing not as fast growing as the bigger plants but for a plant this small like with these little leaves i mean they'll vine out real fast they do really well in damp conditions which is important in tropical vivaria and they're easy to propagate and you just make a cutting and put them on some damp soil they'll just take right off on their own don't need to worry about anything they do have some cons though i find that if you get it too dry these will die a little bit faster than the plants we've talked about to this point but they're still very very hardy they also kind of like everything we've talked about because they grow so easily and so quickly they're going to need quite a bit of trimming and and sort of like with the spider wart they'll start to grow from auxiliary meristems so once you cut the end off you might get them going in all kinds of new directions these guys are also a little bit more for decoration than they are for like being climbed upon by a frog or a gecko just because they've got little leaves and and little vines compared to those but that's also a pro and these need a little bit more light than than the three plants we've talked about before those were all low light plants this is probably more of like a medium light plant so make sure it's in a place that's a little bit uh better lit make sure your lighting is adequate in your enclosure if you don't have lighting this plant's probably not for you and last on our list is the peperomia rosso and i gotta say there are lots of peperomias out there and lots of them can be really good for enclosures a lot of them are really big and and they're great for climbing on and everything they do great this is one i've discovered just recently and i really liked it there are a lot of pros to this one of them was one i was told about when i got it but then had to experiment with so mine for example has lost a leaf and normally that's just a huge disappointment when a leaf falls off of a plant but if this one if you take it and you just put it on some damp soil say in one of your enclosures and just leave it you will be splendidly surprised by what you will find in a couple of weeks because you'll have a whole new plant they're just beautiful i think their little red stems really add a lot they really are a very decorative plant and and i think that they add a lot to an enclosure and they do really well with the type of lighting and humidity that you tend to find in a vivarium it's not uncommon among the plants on this list it's just you know this is this is a more unique and unusual plant but it still does great in a terrarium sort of environment they also stay relatively small which isn't the case for most of the other plants on this list a lot of them will get huge if you let them this one it'll get quite a bit bigger than this but more reasonable in smaller terraria but they do have some cons they need brighter light than do a lot of the other plants on this list this one isn't going to do quite as well if you really really keep it wet or if you let it dry out entirely as the other plants on this list and if you decide that it needs to be trimmed back that it's getting too big because this isn't like a vining plant trimming it back is going to be a little bit less obvious how you should do that i'm actually not sure what i would do in that situation my hope is that it doesn't outgrow any of the applications where i'm keeping it right now in conclusion if you want to build really beautiful tanks you know really beautiful bioactive enclosures that are also easy to maintain these five plants are a really great place to start with the reptile room i've actually been doing a lot of experimenting with other sorts of plants so if you would like to see more plant videos in the future please let me know i actually even know botanists and people who you know know a lot more about plants than your typical zoologist and so if you would like some more like intermediate advanced sorts of content on plants i know the right people we could make that happen so just comment your thoughts on on these ideas down in the comments and we can take this to the next level for now it's pretty hard to miss with these five as always like and subscribe and we hope see you real soon this video is made for people who are like me jeez what is different today of the best easy to care for this is exactly how this should go it shouldn't have worked so well the other times because i don't really have any idea why it works so i'm gonna angle it somehow next on our list oh that has spider webs all over it one moment please

Channel: Clint's Reptiles

Views: 46,890

Rating: 4.9890842 out of 5

Keywords: Reptiles, Pets, Snakes, Lizard, turtles, plants, terrarium, vivarium, paludarium, enclosure, bioactive, pathos, philodendron, wandering jew, serpa design, creeping fig, crested gecko, day gecko, tank, hardy plants, tropical plants, reptiles care, bioactive build, tree frog, dart frog, Clint's Reptiles, Snake Discovery, frog, heart leaf philodendron, heart-leaf, heartleaf, propagation, how to grow, peperomia, Epipremnum aureum, devil's ivy, Philodendron hederaceum, Ficus pumila, peperomia rosso

Id: TtmCrF-uEig

Length: 13min 36sec (816 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 18 2020