Water Gardening: Water Plants for an aquarium?, 1 by Linnea

Linnea wrote:
My dad has a 55 gallon aquarium that he really wants to get some plants established in. I brought in rootballs of arrowroot, grass, watercress, and water lily (a very small variety) from our stream out back, with mixed success. The arrowroot has not come back at all (we cut back all the foliage on all the plants to prevent the decay from contaminating the water too much), and the lilypad has only throw off miniature leaves, which then die back after only a couple of inches. The watercress is doing surprisingly well, given that it is entirely submerged, and the grass is starting to come back.

We are interested in finding a source for small water plants. We don't heat the aquarium, so it stays around 70-65 in the winter. We have seven little zebra-stripe fishes and one goldfish and three freshwater mussels in the tank right now.

Any suggestions would be appreciated!

Thanks,
Cedar