Flowers and Fish: 4 Beautiful Flowering Aquascapes to Inspire Your Next Aquarium

I’ve never been huge on flowers. They’re nice and all, but I’m not the type to go out and get fresh-cut flowers every week. I’m much more of an aquarium type of guy. The only problem is that my better half does like flowers, so my gal and I don’t always see eye-to-eye when it comes to home improvements. She’s rather put up a vase filled with lilies or whatever and I’d rather install another beautiful custom aquarium. Luckily, there’s a simple compromise: paludariums. These water-land hybrid habitats allow you to raise fish and cultivate flowers all in one spot. But do flowers and fish really go well together? Hey — don’t knock it ’til you try it. You’ll be amazed by the beauty of these stunning flowering paludariums. Hopefully, you’ll learn a few tricks and have enough inspiration to build your own floral garden/aquascape hybrid.

Tropical Paludarium with Orchids

As much as I love freshwater aquariums, they just aren’t as colorful as their saltwater counterparts. There are plenty of colorful freshwater fish, but the problem is that green and red freshwater plants just can’t hold a candle to bright and colorful corals. So, one of the best ways to inject a little bit of flare into a freshwater aquascape is to include a gorgeous flowering plant. This tropical paludarium features stunning pink-purple orchids that immediately catch the eye and lure the viewer in for a closer look. The whole aquarium is a spectacle, but without doubt the orchids serve as the centerpiece.

Paludarium with Subdued Pink Orchids

What’s with all of the orchids? Well, these beautiful flowers are perfectly suited for paludariums. They hail from tropical climates, so they love warm, humid conditions.

This paludarium features orchids with a much more subdued shade of pink. It gives the aquascape a calming appearance, unlike the intense colors of the previous paludarium. The flowers are framed beautifully with the feathery plant stopping the eye on the left and the serene empty space slowing down the viewer’s gaze on the right.

Perfectly Pretty Pitcher Plant Paludarium

Ready for something a little bit more exotic? This paludarium serves as the home for a group of pitcher plants. These carnivorous plants feed on bugs (kind of like the Venus fly trap). Instead of chomping down on unlucky flies these pitcher plants have slippery walls. Bugs get lured in by smell and then fall into a pool of digestive juices where they slowly disintegrate. Yuck!

Well, don’t let gelatinous bug guts scare you away — the red pitcher plants add a flare of color that helps this paludarium stand apart.

Stunning Paludarium with Chameleon

This paludarium is absolutely gorgeous. The brightly-colored orange, red, and blue discus fish create a visual parallel with the chameleon and the eye-catching plants above water. The spiky plants above and below water create consistency and harmony, but the color palettes are both so different that the two worlds still feel alien. It’s like yin and yang — two opposites that are somehow similar, coexisting in harmony.