Where can I get floating plants?

[LittleShadow 79]

I've noticed that my algae has gotten way worse since installing my new light.  It's a LED 24/7 daytime/ nightime cycle light.  I love it, other than this problem, and the fact that my algae has gotten so bad I need to wipe stuff down every few days, and the light is a pain to get back onto its cycle, or turn on/ off (you have to use a remote that doesn't always cooperate).  Other than that, it's nighttime light is great because you can use it as a night light!  And it does eventually go pretty dark.   

 Anywho, I've noticed that my tall plants end up getting agae-fied, but the short plants beneath them stay nice and green.  One day, I thought I'd pick off all of the dead, algae covered stuff, and BAM now everything is covered in algae, so, I'm thinking of investing in some frogbit, or something, anything, as long as it's larger than duckweed, floats, and will be fine in a tank with a lid on it.  However, I've never seen any floating plants, save lilies (if those count, I know the roots are underwater, would those work too?) in any stores.  Any ideas on how I could get my hands on any of this stuff?

Thanks!     

[shakaho 6,312]

Try using hornwort as a floating plant.  It has a reputation of making a mess by dropping leaves, but that happens because people try to grow it as a rooted plant, which it isn't.  The old leaves at the "planted " end die and fall off leaving an ugly stem.  The growing end has healthy crowded leaves.  Look at the growing ends here, and also observe the thinning leaves near the bottom.  If you clip off those growing ends and throw away the rest of the plant, the growing ends will float in the tank and grow rapidly.  Rapidly growing plants make great water purifiers.  A bonus-- goldfish don't like to eat them.  I prune away all but the thick growing ends every week or so.

Edited February 28, 2017 by shakaho

[LittleShadow 79]

Cool!  Do you think it would do okay loosely tied to my filter outtake?  Idk why, but I feel like seeing mass floofs off stuff floating around wildly wouldn't do well with me lol.  The outtake itself doesn't really have a whole lot of oomph since it has to go through the filter, then the fsb filter, so most of the movement in the water is from a separate powerhead pump nearby that I put to shoot in the same direction, more or less.

[shakaho 6,312]

You only use about 3 inches of each growing end If you tied each piece to the filter outtake you would have a spiderweb of  strings.  I must say, I have never seen hornwort floating around wildly.  What is an fsb filter?

[LittleShadow 79]

I thought fsb was short for fluidized sand bed filter, one of these:  http://www.americanaquariumproducts.com/FluidizedSandFilter.html   

And I guess it'd probably end up floating in the far left corner, that's where everything the fishes dig up ends up going.  And a spiderweb of strings? LOL!  Now I'm half tempted to do a 50/ 50 free floating and filter outtake experiment, just to see what each looks like!   

[shakaho 6,312]

I understand fluidized sand bed filter, but guessing what "fsb" stands for might take me a week, so I had to ask.   What kind of filter does the water go through before the FSB filter?

The hornwort will definitely go to that corner.

[LittleShadow 79]

LoL you should've seen me on my fiance's reddit, trying to figure out what TIL and IIRC meant!  I don't know if I would've ever gotten it if he hadn't told me!  

And it goes through a SunSun Canister before it goes through the sand filter, I want to say it's the HW303B model, but I can't remember which one it actually was without looking at it  Why, what's up?  

[shakaho 6,312]

Just curious about multiple filters.

[Daniel 5,668]

Check eBay for frogbit and the like - usually you'll come across some.

[AquaAurora 357]

Do you know what type of algae you are having problems with? is it green hair algae?

There are a lot of different algae and each mean an imbalance of something specific.  Hair algae means is light related-too long or too strong.  Try raising your light.  To kill hair algae google "the "one-two-punch" whole tank algae treatment"

where to find floating plants you can google up live aquarium plants for sale, many sties will include floating plants.  eBay has them (get from in the us, not from overseas).  you can also post a wtb (want to buy) thread in the proepr subforum asking for floaters.  I use salvinia minima in several tanks-most betta tanks since they like the shade.  Its not hard to get rid of (unlike duckweed which never goes away) and is not sensitive about being under a lid like forgbit and water lettuce (they need more air flow and frogbit rots from condensation -water dropping on its leaves frequently).

If you'd like I can send you some for cost of shipping small flat rate priority usps, message me for more details as I don't believe we can discuss buying/selling in this section of forum.

 

 

[koko 14,334]

Sure you can hun Talk all you want  

[AquaAurora 357]

13 minutes ago, koko said:

Sure you can hun Talk all you want  

ah must have mixed up rules with another forum that only allows sales talks in sale section. ^^

[LittleShadow 79]

It's not hair algae I'm dealing with (that's the long, stringy stuff, right? like hair? lol).  It's a medium dark greenish brown and just forms a bio-film over anything if I don't wipe it off.  It wipes off fairly easily though.  It doesn't actually cloud the water, because it sticks to the surfaces of basically anything.  It's so bad in some spots that it's smothering my plants out - I even had to wipe off my snail's shells!  I remember it wasn't too awful bad when it first started (just on a couple leaves) until my fiance had the bright idea to wipe it off, then it spread to everything.

  I've noticed with my tall plants that the younger plants underneath do way better than the parts that get the most light, so I'm pretty sure the light is the issue - it's a plant LED on a 24/7 cycle that starts pretty early and goes pretty late.  It goes through a whole daylight/night time cycle, with a nice dark blue light before going out.  If only it wasn't causing these issues (or it wasn't a pain to turn on/ off because all it has is a remote)!  I figured for sure, more light would just make the plants grow like crazy, but they were actually doing better with less I guess.  My FSB filter uses, you probably guessed it, silica sand, and I also have sand in the bottom to cover the plant substrate underneath it -it's the API stuff.  Besides this ugly brown/green stuff, I've seen a little bit of the green spot algae, but it's not enough to be an issue (you really have to look for it to see it).  

I wouldn't mind at all if you sent me some salvinia minima! The way you described it, it sounds just about like what I need, because I'd prefer to keep the lid on my aquarium, per the snails, and I was plenty worried about the duckweed stuff.  I've been really lucky with my fish not bothering the plants much, other than nudging them when they're searching for food, so I don't think they'd eat it.  My main concern about mailing, however, is with the time of year it is, would it end up freezing on the way over and end up dead on arrival? Depending on what day it would arrive, it could be sitting out in 20 degree weather for a while, anywhere between 5-8 hours or so.

 

  

 

 

[koko 14,334]

12 hours ago, LittleShadow said:

It's not hair algae I'm dealing with (that's the long, stringy stuff, right? like hair? lol).  It's a medium dark greenish brown and just forms a bio-film over anything if I don't wipe it off.  It wipes off fairly easily though.  It doesn't actually cloud the water, because it sticks to the surfaces of basically anything.  It's so bad in some spots that it's smothering my plants out - I even had to wipe off my snail's shells!  I remember it wasn't too awful bad when it first started (just on a couple leaves) until my fiance had the bright idea to wipe it off, then it spread to everything.

  I've noticed with my tall plants that the younger plants underneath do way better than the parts that get the most light, so I'm pretty sure the light is the issue - it's a plant LED on a 24/7 cycle that starts pretty early and goes pretty late.  It goes through a whole daylight/night time cycle, with a nice dark blue light before going out.  If only it wasn't causing these issues (or it wasn't a pain to turn on/ off because all it has is a remote)!  I figured for sure, more light would just make the plants grow like crazy, but they were actually doing better with less I guess.  My FSB filter uses, you probably guessed it, silica sand, and I also have sand in the bottom to cover the plant substrate underneath it -it's the API stuff.  Besides this ugly brown/green stuff, I've seen a little bit of the green spot algae, but it's not enough to be an issue (you really have to look for it to see it).  

I wouldn't mind at all if you sent me some salvinia minima! The way you described it, it sounds just about like what I need, because I'd prefer to keep the lid on my aquarium, per the snails, and I was plenty worried about the duckweed stuff.  I've been really lucky with my fish not bothering the plants much, other than nudging them when they're searching for food, so I don't think they'd eat it.  My main concern about mailing, however, is with the time of year it is, would it end up freezing on the way over and end up dead on arrival? Depending on what day it would arrive, it could be sitting out in 20 degree weather for a while, anywhere between 5-8 hours or so.

 

  

 

 

Do you get any natural sun light on the tank? 

[LittleShadow 79]

Not really.  There is a window by it, however the blinds are always closed and they're pretty thick so they block a lot of the light out (not blackout curtain level, but way more than the run of the mill blinds I'm used to.  We don't even use curtains because of them).  The tank is on the same wall as the window, except the window is up higher than the tank, but not directly above or behind it.  

[LittleShadow 79]

Bump =)

[Daniel 5,668]

On 12/03/2017 at 2:42 PM, LittleShadow said:

It's not hair algae I'm dealing with (that's the long, stringy stuff, right? like hair? lol).  It's a medium dark greenish brown and just forms a bio-film over anything if I don't wipe it off.  It wipes off fairly easily though.  It doesn't actually cloud the water, because it sticks to the surfaces of basically anything.  It's so bad in some spots that it's smothering my plants out - I even had to wipe off my snail's shells!  I remember it wasn't too awful bad when it first started (just on a couple leaves) until my fiance had the bright idea to wipe it off, then it spread to everything.

  I've noticed with my tall plants that the younger plants underneath do way better than the parts that get the most light, so I'm pretty sure the light is the issue - it's a plant LED on a 24/7 cycle that starts pretty early and goes pretty late.  It goes through a whole daylight/night time cycle, with a nice dark blue light before going out.  If only it wasn't causing these issues (or it wasn't a pain to turn on/ off because all it has is a remote)!  I figured for sure, more light would just make the plants grow like crazy, but they were actually doing better with less I guess.  My FSB filter uses, you probably guessed it, silica sand, and I also have sand in the bottom to cover the plant substrate underneath it -it's the API stuff.  Besides this ugly brown/green stuff, I've seen a little bit of the green spot algae, but it's not enough to be an issue (you really have to look for it to see it).  

I wouldn't mind at all if you sent me some salvinia minima! The way you described it, it sounds just about like what I need, because I'd prefer to keep the lid on my aquarium, per the snails, and I was plenty worried about the duckweed stuff.  I've been really lucky with my fish not bothering the plants much, other than nudging them when they're searching for food, so I don't think they'd eat it.  My main concern about mailing, however, is with the time of year it is, would it end up freezing on the way over and end up dead on arrival? Depending on what day it would arrive, it could be sitting out in 20 degree weather for a while, anywhere between 5-8 hours or so.

 

  

 

 

1. Less light is better most of the time. A lot of people mistake more light with more plant growth. It is true that more light will give you more growth, but it only does so in a healthy system where the plants have adequate amounts of fertiliser and co₂ to access. Unless you're running a show tank or one for a competition, in my opinion, seldom do you need a lot of light unless you're growing specific types of plants (i.e., red rotalas, some ludwigias, tonina, hemianthus cuba etc).
2. Can you change the timer mode without a remote? You definitely do not need lights on 24/7, even if it employs a night mode. At most, 10 hours in a well developed system. 6-8 hours is usually what I shoot for—there are exceptions, my low tech 'junk tank' (junk because it's where I dumped a lot excess plants I didn't want to bin) only has 4 hours of light a day. In a lot of streams, lakes, etc, most plants only have a few hours of direct sunlight. 
3. Although there are those that will disagree, from my time dabbling in planted tanks, I'm inclined to say get algae when a) you have too much light, b) you have inadequate co₂ and fertilisers, c) poor circulation, or d) all of the above. You're probably right about having too much light if plants lower down aren't effected. PAR levels are lower the further down you go, so they're being hit with less light. 

I wouldn't worry about your window. Unless your tank is getting hit with direct sunlight, they're not as big a problem as people think they are. One of the nurseries here in Oz grows their plants without a shade cloth in full tropical sun and they're spotless. In my opinion, sun is only problem if you aren't prepared to adjust your system to deal with the demands it creates—and these can mostly be offset with more water changes. 

Getting rid of algae can be a problem, but the key things I tend to do, are, firstly, to remove all affected leaves. If too much of the plant is overridden, I just bin it. After that, I reduce my light's intensity by 10% (if this isn't an option, I reduce photoperiod by 1 hour), make sure my filter(s) and hoses are clean, and if need be, change circulation patterns. I tend to do a few more water changes for a little while as well—instead of 1-2 a week, 3-4x. The other option is dosing with hydrogen peroxide, but I prefer to go with holistic measures. Chemical ones kill algae, but they don't really address the problem itself.