safe plants, where to buy them?

[BonnieLorraine]

If you're buying from the store (or even a lot of the big frog vendors purchase wholesale plants from large suppliers) I would wait at least a month for any systemic pesticides to wear off (systemic means it goes inside the plant, into the cells, and no amount of washing will get rid of it, though wash anyway to get off any soil and whatever is on the surface of the leaves). As for pothos, it's probably going to swallow the other plants you put in your tank, when people use pothos in a vivarium, it usually ends up being only pothos because it will strangle everything else in there. The Pilea is good, can get a bit leggy eventually, but you can always pinch it back, Streptocarpellas are awesome gesneriads that we grow in hanging baskets at the school, but can be kept tiny with trimming, and Neoregelia dungsiana gets to about 3"-4" and forms nice little clumps. I try to get a good mix of plants when I'm doing a tank, a few broms (I like to do the same kind of brom in a tank though, looks more natural to me than the people that do 10 varieties of colorful broms in a single tank), some vines up the back wall or climbing the wood, a few epiphytes for up on the branches, one or two ground covers, and some larger filler plants for the mid to back area (your Pilea would fall under that category). Feel free to ask away on the plant questions, I grow this stuff for a living

[xboxQueen]

Wow, the bromeliad is going to stay super tiny.. I thought it was going to grow to 6-8" lol oops my bad. Guess I'll be looking for another one of those. So, its a no go on the pothos.. my pilea is planted in the back-go me for getting something right lol. I have the streptocarpella in the front and the wandering jew in the back corner.

I really want a pink polka dot plant but if I have to let it sit out for a month, ill probably have my frogs by then, won't too little of plants stress them out? Do you have any suggestions as to where to find a decent sized plant pesticide n fertilizer free? even if I don't like it, it'll work until the others grow or buy me some time to cycle some new plants

[BonnieLorraine]

The problem is any decent sized plant is most likely going to have fertilizer and pesticide, you could try to contain the pothos in pots buried in your tank, hack at them religiously, and replace them with other plants once you can get them up to size. Ideally you want to start a tank next time a month or two before introducing frogs so that your plants have time to root and establish themselves, it's hard for cuttings to root with little frogs bouncing all over them lol. The best I can suggest for now is start some cuttings in another covered tank in little pots of ABG, and transfer them over when they're big enough to handle the frogs (not sure what kind of frogs you have, pumilios and other thumbs won't do much damage, but tincs and auratus are quite heavy). I could say grow some faster growing stuff like Hydrocotyle, but you'll end up hacking that back too just like the pothos (though one of these days I'm going to make a tank of solid verticillata, it looks like mini lily pads).

[xboxQueen]

As of right now I don't have any frogs. I had planned on letting these 4 plants establish themselves and a month later order some frogs but I don't think a months worth of growing these plants will give them enough places to hide.

I might do what you suggested, use the pothos until I get some actual plants and give them time to cycle through and I have plenty of the abg mix left over so it should be easy

Bonnie you're the best, thank you so much for all the info and time you've given me!!