Cattails?

It is doable however, they must be grown with only the roots covered. The leaves and stems must be in the open air or they will die.

They also get really huge, so if you are planning to grow these inside the aquarium you will need to give them about 6-9 feet above the tank to grow out.

They will suck nutrients out the tank extremely quickly so you will probably need to plant them in soil to meet their nutrient demands.

Since they are difficult to care for most people don't grow them indoors.

I have taken very small two inches or less cattail shoots in the spring and placed them in community tanks. They did fine but they will grow out of your tank pretty quickly. I cant imagine them as a long term thing but for a couple months they were interesting until I put them back in the pond. If you try to keep them under water by trimming the tops they will give up pretty quickly and start to rot.

thanks, i plan on getting the dwarf variety that only grows 2-3ft instead of 6-9ft. but im curious on how to get them to grow at this depth without rotting before they reach the open air?

also, my heart is not set on only cattails, but thats all could think of. can anybody think of a better plant that would grow from the bottom of an aquarium and protrude through the surface . . . . reeds maybe? rice plants?

Amazon swords maybe.

Most other plants won't grow if their stems are underwater.

You might try something like limnophilia aromatica, or one of the amania species and just let it keep growing once it reaches the surface. They often break the surface if you don't trip them back.

thanks for the reply. i already have some swords, but im looking for something that will prorude more then a foot out of the water. at my cabin there are these reads that protrude 5-6ft out of the water, and their base can be anywhere from .5ft-5ft deep it seems. i think it is illegal for me to take them however.

try already mature papyrus, if you can find some.

I had a cattail seed germinate in one of my tanks, and it grew rapidly as a totally submersed plant until it got big enough to poke through the surface. It should be possible to keep the plant from becoming emersed by trimming the larger leaves and keeping it small in the same way that one keeps Nymphaea species from producing floating leaves.

Other plants that poke up through the surface would include the thick stemmed Hygrophila species, such as H. corymbosa.

What about tulle reeds? They grow in deeper water (about a foot to 2 feet) They have a similar look and I think that taller ones could be trimmed to keep them below your 2-3ft limit.

could papyrus be trimmed and grow under 240watts and could it grow at the depth of a 55g(2ft i believe?)? they have it at a local linders, but the pots are huge, how big is their root base?

as far as tulle reeds go, i googled them and didnt get much info on them, i have the same questions as above on them, and also where they can be found/bought?

give it a shot but a lot of these reed plants prefer a few inches of water.
http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/prod_display.cfm?c=767+774+792&pcatid=792

i have a temp half filled npt on my porch used to grow tadpoles and salamander larvae, now it has one larva in it and lots of snails, the plants i have in it all came from a vernal pool and shallow area of a lake in upstate ny. they include arrow arum (which grows huge but apparently only in deep enough soil), narrowleaf arrowhead, duck weed, and some other plant which i cant identify but has shot up stems with bunches of white flowers. the arrowhead started as bulbs from a single plant i had in a pot that i thought died overwinter but surprised me. they spread like wildfire. all of these plants grow out of the water and havnt rotted from being emersed.