Best Red Aquarium Plants for Beginners

[canton-aquatics]

Adding red plants to your aquarium can create a stunning contrast against green plants and fish. But not all red plants are easy to grow. If you're a beginner, here are some of the best red aquarium plants that require minimal care:

🔴 Ludwigia Repens – One of the easiest red plants, thriving in moderate lighting and basic fertilization.
🔴 Alternanthera Reineckii (AR Mini) – A great choice for foreground or midground, needing moderate light and CO₂ for deeper red hues.
🔴 Rotala Rotundifolia – Turns reddish under good lighting but stays green in low light, making it a flexible option.
🔴 Red Tiger Lotus – A unique, hardy plant with deep red leaves that grows well in most conditions.

To enhance the red coloration, provide sufficient light, iron-rich fertilizers, and, if possible, CO₂ supplementation. Which red plant is your favorite? Let’s discuss!

 

[Simon Cole]

It's got to be the AR Mini for me. It can really bring a design together. Reminds me a bit of the <red buoy incident> between the great artists William Turner and John Constable, but also of legendary scapes like Crimson Sky.

 

[Andy Pierce]

Super topic for discussion.

AR mini is great, but shrimp, particularly amano shrimp, can potentially like to eat it. I had a lot of success with ludwigia but eventually got tired of relentlessly trimming the stems - Ludwigia palustris mini ‘Super Red’ didn't stay very mini for me and comfortably broke 50 cm. If you're ok with reddish rather than straight red then I find a lot to like with Cryptocoryne nurii which does a nice mottled red/green leaf, grows well and stays reasonably low (15-20 cm). Others like Cryptocoryne wendtii ‘Flamingo’ but for me it never actually got red. I don't know if I just got a mislabeled plant, or whether it's crazy sensitive to pH. I was growing it in a CO2-injected hardwater tank. I tried to grow Rotala rotundifolia ‘Orange Juice’ in a low tech setup and it just rotted away, but that was true for a lot of plants in that tank at that time so not necessarily the fault of the plant and I might give it another go.