How do you anchor fake plants?

[Etan]

So I went to the hobby store today and picked up some nice looking silk plants for my aquarium much cheaper and higher quality than what you can get at an LFS.

The plants themselves just have straight stems and I'm wondering how do you guys anchor these down? None of the fish in this tank are plant destroyers, but my pictus cat's are obnoxious and like to run into things.

The only ideas I have so far is putting fishing split shot on the bottom and burying that in the gravel or taking plastic pop bottle caps and cutting a small hole in the top and placing the stem through it.

I know several other people here have purchased fake plants from Hobby Lobby, Michaels etc, so how do you anchor them in the substrate?

 

[EastBay]

If they have metal in the stem for support, you can bend them into different configurations and then bury them. That's what I did.
People will probably say you shouldn't put anything metal in the tank, but I figured it's covered by the plastic sheath and I have yet see any problems.

 

[mother monster]

I've had issues with keeping both fake & live plants down; what seems to work best for me & my monsters {they knock everything over} is rocks. Finding some way to attach the plants to rocks works best for my fatties anyway, though I use slim metal weights for my live plants... I still find them uprooted from time to time. You can tie the plants to rocks with thread, cluster them and use the rocks as a little 'frame', or even epoxy them with reef epoxy to heavier rocks and decor. This is easiest for me. I have some fake floating plants [and man, do they float] in one of my monster tanks that are attached to some round rocks and flat rocks &they haven't dislodged anything since I started using the reef epoxy to fasten everything down, haha. Found half of my rocks outside; the larger, flat decorative rocks that are especially nice for 'gluing' down a plant I got from a local landscaping company for supersuper cheap. Hopefully at least this can give you a few ideas, good luck! ♥

 

[Morganj2]

silicone some rocks to the stem

 

[Yellow_Perch]

well if theres a base just fill over with gravel or sand..but in other ideas just tie a rock to the bottom or something..

 

[burntrubber]

Tie them down to something with fishing lines.

 

[Freezekougra]

depends on how desperate you are but you can silicone them to a CD case and bury it underneath your substrate. makes it much harder to uproot

 

[Gruntking]

silicone some rocks to the stem

 

[justin guest]

If the metal is just steel then you don't need to worry. One easy way would be to drill a small hole through a flat piece of slate and stick the stem through and bend it. looks neat and tidy but make sure you take the sharp edges off the slate by rubbing the edge against something hard first.

 

[Spiritofthesoul]

Get some suction cup and silicone the fake plants onto it.
Let it fully cure and then suction it to the base of the tank.
Cover it up with substrate