Floating Plants

[BiologicalNerd]

Hypothetically, couldn't you have a completely default low-tech starter aquarium with no special substrates, co2 or fert and successfully keep floating plants such as Amazon Frogbit, Dwarf Water Lettuce, Duckweed, Salvinia, or even Red Root Floater?

This is the predicament that I am in... I want to sustain only one species of floating plants with roots that can be maybe 2-5 inches. I may purchase a glass canopy as well as an aquarium light to replace the cheap built-in hood one in the near future, but can someone tell me if it's really necessary though to just sustain a single species of plants extremely close to the light? My tank has lots of condensation and humidity as well as a HOB filter which makes lots of surface agitation. I can always lower the filter current by stuffing a sponge on the output of the filter and also by lowering the power of it. I want to purchase a Dwarf Water Lettuce but my LFS only has red root floaters. Does anybody know if Chili Rasbora and some otos would look good in these? I really wanted a whiter or greener root to help make the rasbora pop but if there are any other recommendations you guys have please let me know.

 

[TClare]

The floating plants should work fine (if there is enough nitrogen produced by the tank inmates?) but they tend not to like surface agitation, you can protect them by putting a boom made of airline tubing to stop them floating close to the outflow.

 

[faydout]

I've got a 10G tank that I'm raising fry in with no substrate, some christmas moss and the dwarf water lettuce completely covering the top. It gets a squirt of Thrive on weekly wc's and that's it. Granted, I'm only running a nano sponge filter, so the flow isn't an issue in this tank, but all things considered, I'd say it's very doable.

 

[Kribensis27]

Red root floaters only have red roots if they get a ton of iron. Unless you dose iron, their roots should be just white. I think they look great with chilis.

 

[jake37]

I put some frogbits in a 5 gallon pail with about 3 1/2 gallons of water; added a $20 floodlight and ended up with roots that were over a foot long and the entire of top of the pail stuff edge to edge. So yes you can grow floaters without issues. I've had fantastic success with water lettuce and frogbits but not yet with red root floaters. I want to get some more red root to test in the pail. One thing to keep in mind is floaters are sensitive to certain current. I haven't quite figured out exactly what pattern keeps them from growing but i know that current can kill them fairly quickly. I've seen this in my 29 where i had some very large well established water lettuce then up the surface current and most of them died off. So keep that in mind.
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As for duckweed - i wish i had a way to keep that stuff from growing. Can't get rid of it - hate it - sorry it came in on the water lettuce. Yuck.

Hypothetically, couldn't you have a completely default low-tech starter aquarium with no special substrates, co2 or fert and successfully keep floating plants such as Amazon Frogbit, Dwarf Water Lettuce, Duckweed, Salvinia, or even Red Root Floater?

 

[BiologicalNerd]

Red root floaters only have red roots if they get a ton of iron. Unless you dose iron, their roots should be just white. I think they look great with chilis.

Is that so? Well that information was extremely helpful! Thank you so much for that

I put some frogbits in a 5 gallon pail with about 3 1/2 gallons of water; added a $20 floodlight and ended up with roots that were over a foot long and the entire of top of the pail stuff edge to edge. So yes you can grow floaters without issues. I've had fantastic success with water lettuce and frogbits but not yet with red root floaters. I want to get some more red root to test in the pail. One thing to keep in mind is floaters are sensitive to certain current. I haven't quite figured out exactly what pattern keeps them from growing but i know that current can kill them fairly quickly. I've seen this in my 29 where i had some very large well established water lettuce then up the surface current and most of them died off. So keep that in mind.
-
As for duckweed - i wish i had a way to keep that stuff from growing. Can't get rid of it - hate it - sorry it came in on the water lettuce. Yuck.

That is such an interesting idea! I can’t believe how I hadn’t thought of that... I’ve seen that some are fragile, but I’ve already put in an order for a sponge to cover the intake of the filter and then i’m also gonna put one where the filtered water gets released. I also just finished putting in an order for 10 feet or air tubing to hold the plants in place Since i’m only gonna have maybe 5 chili rasbora and a few otos, I think the plants should be able to sustain a good amount of the load because there would barely be any strain on the biosystem. I think that it’s safe to assume that due to the courtesy of the plants presence, I can nerf the filter a little bit and make it a tiny bit less efficient.