• You are viewing the forum as a Guest, please login (you can use your Facebook, Twitter, Google or Microsoft account to login) or register using this link: Log in or Sign Up

New floating plant

johnjo

johnjo

Member
Joined
8 Feb 2012
Messages
93
Hi,

Im after a floating plant for my newly set up 35 litre tank. Its only small and i'm a bit wary of floaters normally as the pond varieties can be very invasive, choking everything and difficult to remove once established. Iv tried to research on the net but there are that many contrasting statements i dont know what to believe. My local LFS isn't a big help either. Are there any species anybody could recommend? I dont want it to kill the light just something that looks nice as its an open top tank.

A lily would be nice alternative but not looked into the possibility of having one of those yet in a fairly low tech non pressurised Co2 set up.

Thanks in advance.

John
 
I looked into water lettuce and concluded it would be overkill for my tank, looks good in the tank on the video though.

Does Phyllanthus Fluitans tolerate low/medium light in your experience? The drawback i can see with Phyllanthus Fluitans is that i currently have my spraybar angled slightly upwards towards the surface so its gonna get flung all over the place, unless i change the angle and make a kind of boom for it. It doesn't behave like duckweed does it, as i was plagued with that stuff last year in my mini frog/newt pond and the canal i live by is covered in the stuff come summer.
 
Yeah the fluitans will get blown all over the place alright... Maybe lower the angle?
No its not invasive at all, its very delicate and IMO its quite slow growing! It does tolerate my light, and that's quite low.
If you like I can send you a small amount so you can try it. If you cover postage.
Kris
 
Wouldn,t water lettuce be pretty easy to thin out ? I was thinking of adding some to mine , surely its just a case of cutting any runners off you don,t want at each water change or does it grow that rapid ?
 
Thanks for the offer Kris, yes I'd love to try it out, iv sent you a PM.

I don't know enough about water lettuce to really comment on how fast it grows it just looks to me like if you don't keep on top of it it's gonna block a lot of light out your tank....suppose that applies to most floaters though.
 
Hi all,
Wouldn,t water lettuce be pretty easy to thin out ? I was thinking of adding some to mine , surely its just a case of cutting any runners off you don,t want at each water change or does it grow that rapid ?
Click to expand...
All the floaters are easy to thin out, even Lemna. Water Lettuce (Pistia) is a funny one in that how big the rosettes grow seems to be related almost entirely to light. I've got some big chunky plants in the glasshouse, but in the tank it is always small rosettes. Personally I like them all, but I'd recommend Amazon Frogbit (Limnobium), it is easy to thin, has great structural roots and you can quite often swap it for a credit at the LFS.

I'm away at the moment, but next week I'm home and can sort some floaters out for you. I should have spare Salvinia, Limnobium and Pistia, other than that I have a little bit of Phyllanthus, (which I recently got from "Greenjar"), but this hasn't bulked up yet.

cheers Darrel
 
I was thinking of useing duckweed myself as i have access to somr free stuff :)
 
Thanks for the help guys, Darrel, I'll take you up on that offer.

I'm really enjoying checking all these new plants out. Just been googling those you were talking about and I can see what you mean about the frogbit, its roots do look impressive. After spending years enjoying outdoor plants, especially a love of trees, its really interesting finding all these underwater varieties.

Anybody tried lilies in there tank? I love this scape with the lily in it, it's my favourite aquascape picture off the net.

http://www.aquascapingworld.com/gallery ... 1/1_1d.jpg
 
I have amozonian frogbit in forsale section if your after some :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top