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Hello, Ive just finnished planting the base of my tank with ferns and sword plants, they are all thriving and were picked for their hardiness (advised by LFS so we will see) though most have nearly doubled in size in a week! With one dose of flora boost and no C02. However, I am planning to get some african buttrfly fish for my tank and would like some easy to come by floating plants suitable for aquariums as all i can find are pond floating plants and Ive been warned thye can grow into your lights? Any help would be greatly appreciated ^_^

thanks Andy (Y)

Andy,

I have/had two floating plants that seem ok for a tank:

Duckweed (Lemna) is a smallish plant, maybe 3 to 6 mm in size, that is considered a pest in natural water ways as it multiplies like mad. With good maintenance, meaning frequent thinning out, it is a good nutrient sucker.

Water Lettuce (I think it's Pistia stratoites) is a larger floater, maybe 1 to 3 inches wide, that has some roots growing down into the water that look pretty nice (duckweed has one single root per plant). It also grows fast and needs to be thinned out.

Hope this helps,

Ingo

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Although I've only been able to find it at a local fish club auction, najas grass is my favorite floating plant.

If you take a look at this thread you can see before and after pics of a tank it was added to.

Hornwort can get messy and I've read that once you add duckweed to a tank you can never get it out...

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I have some Duckweed & it's really a pest. You have to remove some of it weekly, as it will cover the water surface really fast.


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Also if you put in Duck weed You will have it in the tank permanently.
I know of a tank that had Duckweed in it. It sat empty for 3 years and when it was refilled. The duckweed came back. Unless you have fish that eat it I would not recommend it.

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As stated "Duck WEED" that is exactly what it is I will never buy fish or plants from a LFS if it has duck weed in that tank. Once you have it it can/will be a BIG problem.

In my 5ft tank I have Foating Water Sprite even that I have to toss out some each month but it gives a good coverage.

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You may want to try a banana plant. They are easy to cultivate, look quite attractive and in case you get tired of them are easy to remove (unlike the duckweed). Here is a link:
http://www.aquariumgarden.com/index.php?doc_base=plant_info.php&plantid=mi072

WOW thankyou for all the replies . Thanks for the warnings on duck weed I was starting to consider it as well .

Keithgh- thankyou I allready had a fair amount of that in the tank so I have taken one bunch out and let it float it seems to be doing okay.

Catdancer- I like that plant but does it float fully or do you plant the roots then the leaves grow and float?....also silly question.. but are the bannanas edible?

Ok,

I gotta say something in defense of the Duck Weed. Granted, it may not be suitable to every tank, but I had no issues with it in 3 out of my 4 tanks. And the one that had an issue had nothing to do with the weed taking over, but with the fact that the HOB filter intake is not too far from the filter output, this caused the duckweed to be pushed down by the output current and being sucked up by the intake, clogging up the latter.

I don't know what you guys and gals are doing with it, but it hasn't happen to me. I removed it from my 125G with no problems, it may have taken 3 "fishing-it-out" sessions, but that was that.

Either case, I like water lettuce much better anyway, and that is why I removed the duck weed from the 125G in the first place.

Bananas are not edible, Andy, they are called this way because the upper part of the root area (don't know if it is actually part of the root system or the plant) look like bananas. I have not heard about having this plant float, but it may be ok. The downside I could see in that would be that the whole plant has a certain height, from root to top, and that means that it probably would not be suited for a shallow tank.

Hope this helps,

Ingo

EDIT: actually, maybe the "bananas" may be edible, but not in a sense that they are bananas. Most aquatic plants are edible, IMHO, but I have no interest in eating them.

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