plants in jars?

[ewok]

i hope this isn't sacrilege in this part of the forum, but i am thinking about keeping plants in my discus tank, but don't want to deal with a bed of gravel. i've seen a couple of tanks whereby people keep plants with substrate in individual jars inside the tank. anyone can recommend some good plants that will be ok with that, and hopefully plants that don't require too much light? my discus don't like bright lights too much and i'd like to make sure they are comfortable first.
thanks.

[alan j t]

My best guess would be amazon swords

[Apistomaster]

Hi Ewok,
I make good use out of the different sizes of Gladware food storage container as pots in most of my tanks. They come in a good selections of sizes and may be used to grow any rooted or stemmed aquarium plants.

I don't poke any holes in them, just use them as they are. I use FloraBase as the potting media and a 12# bag will fill a lot of containers. They are translucent and blend into a bare bottom or as I prefer, a thin layer of the same stuff sprinkled to just enough to bare conceal the bare glass.

The pots allow each plant to receive as much fertilizer as the plant needs and it confines the fertilizer in the immediate confines of the pot. All the Amazon Swords do well in these containers and even those that become root bound continue to grow well as long as sufficient fertilizer is used. For root bound plants, Nutrifin PlantGro sticks work well because the plastic casings allow you to shove the spike deep in among a dense root ball.

This method works very well for me. I like the sandwich containers for planting stem plants in a group. Maybe these would work well for you?