No Extra Room, No Problem: How To Propagate Spider Plants In An Aquarium

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Are you keen to propagate some new plants from your monster spider plant that just keeps making new babies? While rooting these is fairly simple because you can just put them in water, knowing this doesn't help if you don't have anywhere to put them. If your windowsills are already full and there's just no extra room, don't fret because there's an easy solution. If you already have an aquarium in your home, why not give it an additional use as a plant propagator, just like TikTok creator finaddict0 has done. This is a very similar process as using an indoor hydroponic garden to grow edible plants such as lettuce, basil, and spinach.

Basically, you'll be using special planters in your aquarium to root your baby spider plants instead of simply putting them in a glass of water and placing this on a bright windowsill. By the way, you'll find that this method will also work for other houseplants that you can propagate or grow in water, such as begonias, pothos, and philodendron. The additional benefits of using your aquarium to propagate are that the plants are getting the benefit of the aquarium light to help with the rooting process, and you don't have to worry about changing the water every few days because it's constantly being aerated by the aquarium pump.

While you want to submerge the base of the stem that has the nodes in the water, you really need to keep the upper leaves dry. To make this easy, you'll want to take a trip to either a local hydroponics store or an aquarium center, or you can just get the supplies online. 

The first thing you'll need is some net pots, like this set of 12 from the Orimeric store. You'll also want some soft, flexible wire that you can use to secure the pots to the side of the aquarium, and some Legigo LECA clay pebbles or a bag of succulent and cactus gravel. Once you have your supplies, cut a length of the wire, slip the ends into the holes in the side of a net pot, and fashion a hook with the loop so that you can hang the pot on the side of the tank with the base in the water. To make this even easier, you can purchase something like these Borlech aquarium plant holders, which are small receptacles that come complete with a hook for over the side of the tank and suction cups. 

Cut off one of the spider plant babies, place it inside the small pot, and secure it with the pebbles or gravel. That's it! All you have to do now is wait for the roots to start growing and then pot up your new plant. To try this fun propagation technique, be sure you know how to ensure you get babies from your spider plant so you have plenty to propagate. As an alternative, you can also get aquarium suction cups that have clips attached, which you could use to hold the stems of vining plants, like pothos and philodendron.