Make sure to get yourself some floaters, it will drastically change your fish tank experience for the better! (unless... duckweed...) ►► JOIN the Fishkeeping Discord & SUBMIT your Fish Tank bit.ly/3z05bpC We have regular aquarium-related GIVEAWAYS on discord now too! 🙏 Thank you for the support!
i'm starting my first ever aquarium. i've been feverishly doing research for about 2 months now, so much so that now my UA-cam recommendations are psychically linked directly to my brain, so whenever i have an aquarium-related question and open UA-cam, the perfect video is already sitting right on top. i hope to revisit this video a year from now with a beautifully planted aquarium.
This is really great to read! I think we live in a really beautiful time to get into hobbies like fishkeeping or reptilekeeping... there's so much good and easily accessible information out there! Hope your Aquarium turns out as great as you envision it and you don't need to sell both kidneys to afford the rocks and roots!
@@DaWaffleDog planted tanks were always the plan. i've been watching channels like SerpaDesign for years, and it's been a dream for me for a long time. now that i have my first real adult job with real adult money, i'm starting my first big project; a 36 gallon planted tank. shrimps, tetras, rasboras, corys, the works. basic easy starter tank, that MIGHT turn into a betta community tank if all goes well. i'm not planning on the betta for a long while though; i'm not even buying fish for the tank until next year. only shrimp, snails, and plants lol
@@kasagure. yayy good luck I was just making a reference to one of Chris’s ftrs wheee someone spent 8 hours and didn’t find out ab Live plants (The tank was still great)
I’ve had Hornwart for seven years…it’s in all my tanks, even Oscar tanks. I even give some to my LFS for their tanks. It all started with a small bunch years ago. I love it especially for the destructive cichlid tanks.
I have a potato in one tank. My local stores haven't had any duckweed or other plants lately and I needed something to combat algae. I read a hack of putting a sweet potato in your tank to help absorb excess nutrients. First sweet potato rotted, current random potato we were going to cook has grown huge roots and some leaves. The trick is to hang it above the water and let it grow down.
If you have a bubbler, place over the bubbler. Same with and plant cuttings like pothos, anything placed into the water will rot. But with the bubbles popping it will keep it moist and eventually it will send roots down. All my pothos have probably 3-4 inches of root that is out of the water. I learned this when growing weed cuttings. Having said that, pothos are also great for sucking out nitrates, they grow like weeds 😊. I always throw a large bunch in new tanks now.
@littlewigglemonster7691 the second one is next to the filter outlet, it makes enough of a splash to keep it moist. Great idea to use a bubbler too. I may try that for my other tank.
@littlewigglemonster7691 my pothos has started putting out new shoots underwater! Some of the underwater portion of vine died off, some of it has a real stubborn streak.
It is among the best plants to use as a natural spawning mop, too. I wouldn't put it near a display tank, but it and java moss are the best fishroom plants.
Frogbit is amazing for beta. With a dirted tank i found frogbit is incredible for establishing large amounts of worms and daphnia for the betta. My betta hunts all day and loves the coverage. I've left him for over a week with no food i only supplement feed him occasionally, and i got a very healthy chunker of a fish
Hornwort is pretty great 😄 But Chris is right, you have to constantly trim that plant. It will grow fast, but then it will totally die quickly and drop needles everywhere.
I just want to mention Riccia Fluitans here. Beautiful plant, can form gorgeous round orbs of dense branchiness with very pretty pearling if conditions are right. Just... While it looks amazing as a foreground plant, or attached to hardscape, it really really really just wants to be a floating plant in my experience. And small broken/trimmed bits of it can easily get everywhere and grow in all sorts of unintended places. It attaching itself to anything? HAHAHA no, YOU attach this thing. But it can look so pretty though...
I want to take an opportunity to advocate for a misunderstood floater: Greater Duckweed. If duckweed was the size of dwarf salvinia. It grows slower, and is far easier to spot and remove, but retains the small scale for tiny tanks, and the short roots for tank maintenance, and will thrive anywhere, in any water. As a bonus, its got red on its roots and underside leaves. Best of all worlds. S class.
I think this is what I got from a seller on etsy. I ordered red root floaters n got this, when red root floats on other accounts look more like in this video. I feel duped.
I don’t mind duckweed. When there is too much I scoop it out, bake in the oven to dry it out and then feed it to my fish. I saw a longer version on another FFT video and tried it. Great idea. I have a ton of pothos hanging out my 2 aquariums, works and looks great.
Frogbit story here! I was able to house a few betta fish in a 35 gallon. The intention was to form a sorority, and it.. sort of worked. As long as there were enough hiding places, the females established territories in different areas of the tank. And the frogbit broke line of sight at the top of the tank. I had initially purchased all my betta as females, but it turned out that at least one (if not more than one) were adolescent males. Of the 2, one was quite sickly, and didn't last very long. The other lived with me for around 2 years, and died of old age recently. But, when I reintroduced that old man to the large tank, he bred with the dominant most female, making the bubble nest among the frogbit. Along with frogbit and Salvinia, I used breeding net boxes to divide the tank up a bit more. Watched some interesting breeding habits of the Betta. Only the dominant female will breed with the male (she'll chase away any other females that come close) and she did so frequently that she began to grow too skinny, and I had to separate her out and into one of the breeder boxes to give her time to recover. Which permitted one of the other female to take her place in the pecking order. So another benefit of floating plants is breaking line of sight for aggressive fish at the surface, where they are more likely to come in contact and spot each other at feeding times.
Woah This was an interesting read!! Been interested in bettas but don’t have the confidence to try a sorority, let alone sorority plus a male 😅, thanks for sharing!
I literally tried to prove Chris wrong with Hornwort. It looked so beautiful at the store. Man, horrible, picture dropping a year old evergreen Christmas tree in your fish tank, dunking in and out 5 times, and a stem. That's hornwort.
Water Lettuce can be used to actually get rid of most the duckweed, at least the non dwarf variant. In my Shrimp tank my Water Lettuce is so big its pushing against the glass and killing the outermost layer to compete, I have pulled out 2 foot long root systems with Water Lettuce as wide around as my head, it just outcompetes anything smaller then it on the surface, I adopted 12 guppies from a friend who didn't want them anymore...I now have close to like 60 in 2 tanks and the Water Lettuce is allowing me to combat being overstocked while I try to find a place to sell them.
This exactly what I needed today. I have some extra $$$ to buy plants. I am finally setting up my 20 gallon long for my African dwarf frogs. I’m so excited to do plant shopping. I have everything else ready to go!
Another fantastic floater (imo) is fairymoss/Azolla Caroliniana. It can get out of hand like duckweed, but it creates an amazing bog aesthetic in my still blackwater tank
Hornwort is great in a container pond that gets lots of sunlight. It's beautiful from the surface. I think it is too much in an aquarium. Water sprite is also really nice growing in a plant basket in a pond because it becomes this lovely fern when it emerges. I have a ton of it growing in a kiddie pool. I love salvinia, water lettuce, and frogbit, too.
Pothos experience, I've been keeping them fully submerged in the water. That said, a high percentage of the original leaves will die off as it's acclimating, but new leaves and roots will quickly grow to adapt in the water. The method that's worked for me so far is to take a cutting and put it in a bowl of water first, just the stem. Let it grow some roots and add your fish water into it when you do water changes. After the roots get really long, and the leaves get big and healthy, station it in your tank submerged. A leaf or 2 will die off, trim as needed. The growth will be slower. I prefer this because there's less maintenance. My betta and loaches love it though
Another warning about Horntwort - it is INCREDIBLY invasive in a lot of areas and can literally choke-out entire lakes and ponds in one summer, and it can and will survive most winters.
I was looking up easy plants when first setting up a tank, and NONE of the videos I watched had Elodea/anacharis on it. Got a plant pack from an etsy seller that had anacharsis, and holy, that plant is SO easy. It's absolutely thriving in my mom's 20 gallon tank that I scaped for her, and now it's in my 10g and my new 30g tank. Super easy plant. Planted it, it melted back, then grew back with a vengeance. Our 20g looks like it has roller coaster tracks in it.
my biggest frustration as a newb fishkeeper was that I couldn't keep floaters alive. My accidental life hack was that I picked up some guppy grass somewhere, and it held my floaters in a safe and loving embrace. I have 6 tanks, some big and some small, and I can't grow the same floaters in each tank. Similar lighting, similar stocking, but in some- duckweed bonanza only vs tanks that are almost stacking frogbit on top of frogbit with salvinia minima peeking through all the cracks. I had a few months of amazing redroot floaters in the tanks with the good duckweed conditions but they died off and I can't get them to grow back. Water lettuce grew well in that tank for awhile too, but they died last winter and I kinda forgot they existed. I had a trial 20g only shrimp tank on my back porch that I just put floaters in, and duckweed loved the 16hr days of direct sunlight while the frogbit stayed very small and the salvinia minima was the size of duckweed. I just moved that tank inside last weekend as it'll be properly cold any day now and I guessssssss it's time to set it up properly :) The shrimp in it are kind of miracles-- I always dumped my water change water into it and some shrimp fry arrived too. They survived and bred during weeks of 40C/104F+ heat, and also overnights of sub15C/59 colds.
You just need to know how to deal with the hornwart. Usually hornwort sheds if it’s anchored in the substrate because In nature it’s a floater plant, I had no problems with my amazing hornwort :)
Redroot floaters hate themselves in my water. (Does it have a hard time with hard water?) Frogbit, salvinia, duckweed, and giant duckweed booms here, though. Mystery snails will start munching the frogbit roots if they're underfed though. Just starting out my guppy grass now. Stores around here don't seem to stock it. Took a while to find. Edit to add: dwarf water lettuce is doing great now too.
Wide leaf water sprite is my favourite. Needs a good bit of light. Totally different than narrow leaf water sprite. Currently have no duckweed, Thank you, Buddha
Great video! I will say I am a little disappointed there was no quick PSA at the end or beginning about the invasiveness of some of these species (salvinia, non-Amazon frogbit, watersprite, etc) and how to correctly dispose of them (let it dry out completely and then into a sealed plastic bag - NEVER compost). I think its just important to even remind viewers to check their local banned/invasive species lists.
you right, especially when I have been sponsored by environmental organizations to make PSA's about invasive plants... and I've worked as an ecologist to prevent this 😭😭 I really just separate my mind from the real world when i'm caught up in this hobby lmao
@@FishForThought Hey thanks for the highlight! It was a great video and hopefully people will take the comment to heart when selecting their plants! May the fish gods spare you the duckweed of penance 😂
As a nice can-do-all I recommend Lindernia rotundifolia, this plant grows as stemplant in substrate, free floating and goes emers on roots sticking out the tank, also work well in a paludarium ... when floating or emers they develop a lot of cute white blossoms. Amazingly I managed to kill duckweed with salvinia auriculata, seems it deprived the duckweed of nutrients with its longer roots and fast growth. The duckweed went yellow and disappeared soon after, ofc dont add fertilizer if thats your goal ... being duckweed free for years now. Redroot floaters are my favorite, my puffer and other shy fish love the red shade under it ... with enough light they really pop and give a nice contrast to green plants in the tank.
I really enjoy my banana lily and centella asiatica. Not 'real' floaters but they look really nice! Also, giant duckweed is so different from regular duckweed. Much easier to get rid of when you grow sick of it, longer roots, but not as long as frogbit, and it looks just like a mini version of frogbit from above. Not as common, unfortunately, but an absolute GOAT. Definitely get it when you have the chance!
One time I had so much dwarf water lettuce that I gave 2 buckets full of it to a fish store and that was enough to fill around 7 small tanks. If you have good lighting that stuff GROWS,. It's also pretty easy to get it to flower.
I added valisanaria which came in a couple of cheap bunches with pretty much no roots. They have always died on me when planting, instead I just threw them in and left them floating, they've thrived, grown roots and planted themselves to the bottom of the tank and spread.
I put my water lettuce and duckweed in my worm bins and they love it. Or just compost it directly into my planters. They are a good way of storing fish tank nutrients to use in the garden when you accidentally managed your nutrient sponges too well defeating the purpose of water changes being fertilizer for the garden.
6:36 been there done that moved from Duckweed to Salvinia Now My Niece's turtle has both and doesn't want to eat them anymore XD I had some Frogbit, but it didn't survive. Note: if you have a Cascade/HoB Filter, separate the waterfall since the top of it HAS TO BE dry or else it will rot. Learnt it the hard way. And now I'm considering adding that Philodendron to my tank. Even have some idea how to arange the emerse part...
For pothos cutting, best to keep all stems out of water, just keep it above the water with a bubbler underneath. The bubbles popping underneath will keep them moist, and they will not rot that way. Most of my roots are 3-4 inches out of the water. Also I tried with already established roots from dirt, that I washed. Best to do cuttings. The roots that grow into the water are fine but old roots from soil seem to rot eventually as well
Duckweed is crazy man! Mine started with just a pair of leaves that came with my RCS and they took over the tank in just a week. Just completely got rid of mine by installing a wavemaker in my tank. It took a month overall for all the duckweed to drown.
Thanks for this list, man! I've been trying to find the proper floaters for my tanks for a while now! Do you have any sellers you would recommend buying any floaters from?
Pretty much all your climbing variety terrestrial plants are great - plenty of philodendron varieties, syngoniums are fabulous as well and come in a load of different colours to add a little extra oomph if you’re after that! There’s also a few smaller monstera climbing varieties that grow faster then the generic monstera that everyone knows
I never see anyone mention this, but I'm using coleus and pothos together. Coleus is amazing and GORGEOUS. It will root in any water, propagates readily, and comes in a rainbow of colors from white, pink, lime green, purple, orange, red, and black. There are even cultivars which look like seaweed or oak leaves.
I love water sprite! I grow it in my 16 gallon and I'm constantly having to throw some out because of how fast it grows. I also have to trim the roots because it does the same thing as elodea. I have it to thank for my low nitrate!
Hornwort elodia ambulia and anything that looks similar, disintegrates basically into a powder of sorts and strings. Elodia is great, unless it dies due to lack of light or when theyre bought as trimming with no roots. Some places sell all these as trimmings, and they will break down while sending out new shoots, so makes a mess turning to debris but also trying to grow. I've gotten elodia with roots, and they've geown amazing, but they do take over a tank in a similar way to valesnaria or dwarf sagetaria, so need some trimming and maintenance, usually a lot sooner than most other aquarium plants.
I like to take my hornwort and add a plant weight to the center of them. Looping the long strands of plant back in circles to the weight so it rests on the bottom and presents more like a stem plant.
Once my tank was cycled and i figured out that it doesnt like water movement. Red root floaters have take off for me. Nearly my whole 40 gallon surface is covered in it. Close to throwing some of it away because its blocking out the light
In my community tank there is a beautiful forest of hornwort, it's absolutely thriving. In my shrimp tank it dropped its needles and refused to grow. Probably just up to luck. Red root floaters all died due to high water movement so hornwort is the one for me.
I got hornwort when I worked at Petco, I was told it was super easy. Well, put in my tank. Next few weeks it died and destroyed my beautiful looking tank with the nasty looking needles everywhere. Hate em, but now I have the pretty looking elodia and I’m hoping it survives lol
i got rid of my duckweed, i think via an algae cleanser. or pond treatment. but have not had a single bit in well over 2 years after it was a big headache for 2 years. breaking the surface tension also helped maintain its numbers,
My biggest issue with keeping houseplants growing in my aquarium is my cats think pothos is delicious. It's supposed to be toxic to them but they never throw up or show any ill effects. Any suggestions on keeping them out of it?
Only way I've ever managed to get rid of duck weed once and for all was to completely break the tank down. Rinse and hand screen every plant you intend to reuse before introducing it to the new scape. Then, after everything is said and done keep a extremely close eye on the tank. Check every day for single duckweed leaves that may have snuck in. Remove with tweezers as you see them. It took about two weeks of this to get rid of my duck weed. Never seen it since lol Great plant, especially for fast cover, fish food, and nutrient export. But it's easily overwhelming. Wonder if giant duckweed is better
Monstera adonsonii is doing ok in the tank but monstera deliciousa absolutely loved the tank! Its roots grew all the way down into the substrate. I ended up taking it out and dirting it since it made such a massive root system
hornwort seems to go through a dormant period. but it's good in a cichlid tank. i used it to great advantage with jack dempseys. rocks on the bottom and a good thicket of hornwort floating at the top.
lol I have a thriving jar of hornwort and snails “for emergencies” but I haven’t encountered an emergency that requires hornwort yet. I guess it’s definitely cycled and I can use it to isolate shrimp or dump the whole thing into a quarantine tub. The only reason I haven’t put it in a tank is so people don’t think I’m a pleb who needs beginner plants 😤
My first floater was actually red root floaters--in a 10 gallon which I had some shrimp and my since-passed dwarf orange crayfish Taco. They got crazy in that tank and ended up spreading to my 30 gallon where Chaos, my current pet bristlenose pleco and his tankmates now live. They do best in medium light with very little manhandling or flow on a weekly basis, and they seem to benefit from higher mineral and iron content since any attempts of mine to add a piece to my new 10 gallon which is softer and more acidic results in melty nastiness (and very well-fed snails).
Also! Spider plants aren't all that drought-resistant--a lot of people use them because they are so thirsty when planted in soil! They're probably best used in contained hydroponic baskets, though, since the larger, more mature tuberous roots can grow down and get gnarly and entangled in tank objects without something to keep them at the surface.
Chris, i have not had my horn wort drop its leaves.. or needles, till it was exposed to air and mass droped... Cuase i broke something in my tank and needed re-glueing
Question I recently got a a five gallon tank which I'm not used to since I'm used to 10 or 20 gallons what can I stock in it, it came with a bunch of benefital fish care stuff and water treatment stuff to make the water better for fish technically I have two tanks ones topless one can fit a lid on it. But ultimately I'm looking at what I can put in these tanks I'm obviously going with live plants and some species of fish I was just wondering for suggestions and I'll likely need some form of a clean up crew.
Mollies keep my hornwort from looking like a pine tree in fall. But ive mentioned before, hornwort is the only plant my mollies dont completely destroy, maybe its because they drop the needles, and they eat those instead of the living plants.
I got duckweed „accidentally“ it came with the shrimp I ordered online and for some reason it doesn’t grow as fast as people always say. I had it in for almost two months now and it covers maybe a quarter of my tank
I love hornwort (how dare you!) I cut it off before it disintegrates and feed it to my turtle in a different set-up. Once it looks a little less light green - a little more of that dirty green or brown colour - you have to cut it off, but it makes a great food source. It grows really fast and doesn't completely die off. I have a problem with plants that don't do well and waste my money.
I used to almost drown in frogbit but for the last couple of month, the leafs started getting yellow and melting. Roots also almost completely stopped growing. Nothing else changed about my setup, same lights, same stocking, water parameters are constant. The only thing I can think of is that the water provider may have switched something up because I'm having the same issues in the three main tanks (different levels of maturity, so it's not like all the nutrients from the substrate have miraculously disappeared, either). If anyone recognizes the problem or has any idea about the cause/possible solutions, I'm open to advice.
I have a big mixture of salvinia minima, red roots, water lettuce, and accidental duckweed on top of my tank. I also have a huge pothos root ball in there. For a while I thought my cycle had crashed because my nitrates disappeared, but I finally figured out I just have too many plants and there were no nutrients left and my plants were struggling, so I started dosing with a bit of Seachem flourish… and now I have algae. 😭
Spider plant babies rooted in water do well in water, they don’t make bulbous roots, instead they grow long thin webbing of roots. A rooted spiderplant in soil will have roots adapted to soil. Start with a fresh pup.
I looooove DUCKWEED it's so helpfull to have perfect waterquality, once a week I scoop the most of it out (it takes one minute) and feed it to my crickets, those I feed to my crested gecko, perfect circle of life I guess :D also scoop it out, dry it, grind it to powder, use it as shrimp food, specially for babyshrimp. free food, the best!
@FishForThought thats how I ended up with it in the first place The fellow I got my initial shrimp from in Victoria BC gave me the hortwart saying it was in all their tank already and was great
I tried red root floater 3x and never got it to survive, then i got "a piece of salvinia made it in the bag with you shrimp, are you mad about it?" 2 months later im throwing away salvinia once a week cus it totally covers the surface of a 20 high, a 20 long, and a 36 bowfront
Frogbit is always one of my top choices, if I could only have one plant in a tank it would Frogbit, easily fills an entire tank top to bottom. You left out a really good one though, guppy grass. Also floats, easy to trim and by itself can fill an entire tank, super beginner friendly.
My water sprite doesn't like to stay in the substrate, it looked great for a while, then they eventually kill off the bottom to where they float and start growing out of the water, it's cool but it's just not what I want
Make sure to get yourself some floaters, it will drastically change your fish tank experience for the better! (unless... duckweed...)
►► JOIN the Fishkeeping Discord & SUBMIT your Fish Tank bit.ly/3z05bpC
We have regular aquarium-related GIVEAWAYS on discord now too!
🙏 Thank you for the support!
Not this coming out 2 days AFTER I ordered plants... 😅
@@armymedic_bnw it's okay, there are no plant giveaways YET so you didn't miss out!
Gordon Ramsay is a fishkeeper?
@@Aquascapegoat ofc
My discus is throwing the duck weed on the wall..
nahhhh, the best floaters are the cryptocoryne after your corydoras and kuhli loaches dig em up after you just planted them
This made me chuckle 😂
this is so true some of my crypts are not planted right now :(
This made me LOL!!!
Or Malaysian trumpet snails. They’re like an std for a fish tank
@@Griffin050A1t stop 😂 I’m dead
How dare UA-cam keep this video away from me for 43 seconds
IKR
@@PomPomPlants 😂😂
Bro💀
How dare UA-cam keep this video away from me for 1 hour💀
The audacity
i'm starting my first ever aquarium. i've been feverishly doing research for about 2 months now, so much so that now my UA-cam recommendations are psychically linked directly to my brain, so whenever i have an aquarium-related question and open UA-cam, the perfect video is already sitting right on top. i hope to revisit this video a year from now with a beautifully planted aquarium.
This is really great to read! I think we live in a really beautiful time to get into hobbies like fishkeeping or reptilekeeping... there's so much good and easily accessible information out there! Hope your Aquarium turns out as great as you envision it and you don't need to sell both kidneys to afford the rocks and roots!
see you in a year, back here haha
youve found out about planted tanks right? You've had more than 8 hours lolz
but still good luck lol
@@DaWaffleDog planted tanks were always the plan. i've been watching channels like SerpaDesign for years, and it's been a dream for me for a long time. now that i have my first real adult job with real adult money, i'm starting my first big project; a 36 gallon planted tank. shrimps, tetras, rasboras, corys, the works. basic easy starter tank, that MIGHT turn into a betta community tank if all goes well. i'm not planning on the betta for a long while though; i'm not even buying fish for the tank until next year. only shrimp, snails, and plants lol
@@kasagure. yayy good luck
I was just making a reference to one of Chris’s ftrs wheee someone spent 8 hours and didn’t find out ab Live plants
(The tank was still great)
I’ve had Hornwart for seven years…it’s in all my tanks, even Oscar tanks. I even give some to my LFS for their tanks. It all started with a small bunch years ago. I love it especially for the destructive cichlid tanks.
It is the sturdiest aquarium plant i know
But he didnt say how sturdy it is
Yeah this balding youtuber didnt know how hornwort function.
Horwort is terrible for the wild which is why he hates it. It's a powerful plant
I have a potato in one tank. My local stores haven't had any duckweed or other plants lately and I needed something to combat algae. I read a hack of putting a sweet potato in your tank to help absorb excess nutrients. First sweet potato rotted, current random potato we were going to cook has grown huge roots and some leaves.
The trick is to hang it above the water and let it grow down.
If you have a bubbler, place over the bubbler. Same with and plant cuttings like pothos, anything placed into the water will rot. But with the bubbles popping it will keep it moist and eventually it will send roots down. All my pothos have probably 3-4 inches of root that is out of the water. I learned this when growing weed cuttings.
Having said that, pothos are also great for sucking out nitrates, they grow like weeds 😊. I always throw a large bunch in new tanks now.
@littlewigglemonster7691 the second one is next to the filter outlet, it makes enough of a splash to keep it moist. Great idea to use a bubbler too. I may try that for my other tank.
@littlewigglemonster7691 my pothos has started putting out new shoots underwater! Some of the underwater portion of vine died off, some of it has a real stubborn streak.
Me looking at my shrimp sleeping in the hornwort that's taking up 90% of the tank as it gets rated F tier.
My shrimp love laying in the hornwort two!!
It’s amazing for them :D
It is among the best plants to use as a natural spawning mop, too. I wouldn't put it near a display tank, but it and java moss are the best fishroom plants.
HAHAHA
wait it's actually Z tier
@@FishForThought You're thinking süsswassertang.
Frogbit is amazing for beta. With a dirted tank i found frogbit is incredible for establishing large amounts of worms and daphnia for the betta. My betta hunts all day and loves the coverage. I've left him for over a week with no food i only supplement feed him occasionally, and i got a very healthy chunker of a fish
Chris, you are completely right about duckweed being a right of passage for beginners, that is the most factual thing I’ve heard all day.
Hornwort is pretty great 😄 But Chris is right, you have to constantly trim that plant. It will grow fast, but then it will totally die quickly and drop needles everywhere.
Frankly when you were talking about Hornwort I felt attacked but you made me laugh when talking about duckweed
I just want to mention Riccia Fluitans here.
Beautiful plant, can form gorgeous round orbs of dense branchiness with very pretty pearling if conditions are right. Just... While it looks amazing as a foreground plant, or attached to hardscape, it really really really just wants to be a floating plant in my experience. And small broken/trimmed bits of it can easily get everywhere and grow in all sorts of unintended places.
It attaching itself to anything? HAHAHA no, YOU attach this thing.
But it can look so pretty though...
I want to take an opportunity to advocate for a misunderstood floater: Greater Duckweed. If duckweed was the size of dwarf salvinia. It grows slower, and is far easier to spot and remove, but retains the small scale for tiny tanks, and the short roots for tank maintenance, and will thrive anywhere, in any water. As a bonus, its got red on its roots and underside leaves. Best of all worlds. S class.
greater duckweed rly is greater
I think this is what I got from a seller on etsy. I ordered red root floaters n got this, when red root floats on other accounts look more like in this video. I feel duped.
@sj19976 yeah, i would too if i ordered one and got the other, but they're still a good floater
@@sj19976they are completely different plants but worth the same amount and just as nice to have.
Another video!
Just what I needed after school !
:D
I don’t mind duckweed. When there is too much I scoop it out, bake in the oven to dry it out and then feed it to my fish. I saw a longer version on another FFT video and tried it. Great idea. I have a ton of pothos hanging out my 2 aquariums, works and looks great.
Frogbit story here!
I was able to house a few betta fish in a 35 gallon. The intention was to form a sorority, and it.. sort of worked. As long as there were enough hiding places, the females established territories in different areas of the tank. And the frogbit broke line of sight at the top of the tank. I had initially purchased all my betta as females, but it turned out that at least one (if not more than one) were adolescent males. Of the 2, one was quite sickly, and didn't last very long. The other lived with me for around 2 years, and died of old age recently.
But, when I reintroduced that old man to the large tank, he bred with the dominant most female, making the bubble nest among the frogbit. Along with frogbit and Salvinia, I used breeding net boxes to divide the tank up a bit more. Watched some interesting breeding habits of the Betta. Only the dominant female will breed with the male (she'll chase away any other females that come close) and she did so frequently that she began to grow too skinny, and I had to separate her out and into one of the breeder boxes to give her time to recover. Which permitted one of the other female to take her place in the pecking order.
So another benefit of floating plants is breaking line of sight for aggressive fish at the surface, where they are more likely to come in contact and spot each other at feeding times.
Tldr
Woah This was an interesting read!! Been interested in bettas but don’t have the confidence to try a sorority, let alone sorority plus a male 😅, thanks for sharing!
@@sparkdrive2900Lmao your comments on this channel are so funny. Fish for thought no. 1 hater n for what 😅😅
I literally tried to prove Chris wrong with Hornwort. It looked so beautiful at the store. Man, horrible, picture dropping a year old evergreen Christmas tree in your fish tank, dunking in and out 5 times, and a stem. That's hornwort.
see this is what the eff I mean!
Water Lettuce can be used to actually get rid of most the duckweed, at least the non dwarf variant. In my Shrimp tank my Water Lettuce is so big its pushing against the glass and killing the outermost layer to compete, I have pulled out 2 foot long root systems with Water Lettuce as wide around as my head, it just outcompetes anything smaller then it on the surface, I adopted 12 guppies from a friend who didn't want them anymore...I now have close to like 60 in 2 tanks and the Water Lettuce is allowing me to combat being overstocked while I try to find a place to sell them.
a FFT video is the only good thing that happened to me today
Started watching and loving your Channel when I was 13 and now I'll be 18 in a few hours🙃🫠😅🤯
Happy birthday
Happy birthday!!
wow Happy birthday!!
makes me feel old LOL
"You cant get rid of duckweed"
My Angelfish: hold my flakes
This exactly what I needed today. I have some extra $$$ to buy plants. I am finally setting up my 20 gallon long for my African dwarf frogs. I’m so excited to do plant shopping. I have everything else ready to go!
@@mockfanatik good luck, you can do it! Check mine for inspiration if you need any
noway we got 2 uploads from chirs this week, very informative always had some issues choosing a floater plant but this kinda made it clear
Another fantastic floater (imo) is fairymoss/Azolla Caroliniana. It can get out of hand like duckweed, but it creates an amazing bog aesthetic in my still blackwater tank
Hornwort is great in a container pond that gets lots of sunlight. It's beautiful from the surface. I think it is too much in an aquarium. Water sprite is also really nice growing in a plant basket in a pond because it becomes this lovely fern when it emerges. I have a ton of it growing in a kiddie pool. I love salvinia, water lettuce, and frogbit, too.
Pothos experience, I've been keeping them fully submerged in the water. That said, a high percentage of the original leaves will die off as it's acclimating, but new leaves and roots will quickly grow to adapt in the water. The method that's worked for me so far is to take a cutting and put it in a bowl of water first, just the stem. Let it grow some roots and add your fish water into it when you do water changes. After the roots get really long, and the leaves get big and healthy, station it in your tank submerged. A leaf or 2 will die off, trim as needed. The growth will be slower. I prefer this because there's less maintenance. My betta and loaches love it though
Another warning about Horntwort - it is INCREDIBLY invasive in a lot of areas and can literally choke-out entire lakes and ponds in one summer, and it can and will survive most winters.
Thank you, I’m having a truly horrible day this was a lovely surprise.
._.
@ ?
Dude is hilarious lmao, awesome/informational vid🙌🏽🙌🏽🙌🏽
I was looking up easy plants when first setting up a tank, and NONE of the videos I watched had Elodea/anacharis on it. Got a plant pack from an etsy seller that had anacharsis, and holy, that plant is SO easy. It's absolutely thriving in my mom's 20 gallon tank that I scaped for her, and now it's in my 10g and my new 30g tank. Super easy plant. Planted it, it melted back, then grew back with a vengeance. Our 20g looks like it has roller coaster tracks in it.
my biggest frustration as a newb fishkeeper was that I couldn't keep floaters alive. My accidental life hack was that I picked up some guppy grass somewhere, and it held my floaters in a safe and loving embrace. I have 6 tanks, some big and some small, and I can't grow the same floaters in each tank. Similar lighting, similar stocking, but in some- duckweed bonanza only vs tanks that are almost stacking frogbit on top of frogbit with salvinia minima peeking through all the cracks. I had a few months of amazing redroot floaters in the tanks with the good duckweed conditions but they died off and I can't get them to grow back. Water lettuce grew well in that tank for awhile too, but they died last winter and I kinda forgot they existed. I had a trial 20g only shrimp tank on my back porch that I just put floaters in, and duckweed loved the 16hr days of direct sunlight while the frogbit stayed very small and the salvinia minima was the size of duckweed. I just moved that tank inside last weekend as it'll be properly cold any day now and I guessssssss it's time to set it up properly :) The shrimp in it are kind of miracles-- I always dumped my water change water into it and some shrimp fry arrived too. They survived and bred during weeks of 40C/104F+ heat, and also overnights of sub15C/59 colds.
Salvinia minima is my go-to, so glad to see it get the spot on this list
I have never seen hornworth drop thier needels, no idea how you did that.
same
i dont get what hes saying
ive seen them brown down on the stem because of fish poop i just cut it out and throw it
i'm really skilled in a different way I guess :,)
@@FishForThought must be the weather temp or sumthin
i live in a tropical area
I also have hornwart if I’m right it doesn’t drop needles … it grows pretty fast my shrimp love it and my PH has to be low anyway for my fish species!
You just need to know how to deal with the hornwart. Usually hornwort sheds if it’s anchored in the substrate because In nature it’s a floater plant, I had no problems with my amazing hornwort :)
Redroot floaters hate themselves in my water. (Does it have a hard time with hard water?) Frogbit, salvinia, duckweed, and giant duckweed booms here, though. Mystery snails will start munching the frogbit roots if they're underfed though.
Just starting out my guppy grass now. Stores around here don't seem to stock it. Took a while to find.
Edit to add: dwarf water lettuce is doing great now too.
Wide leaf water sprite is my favourite. Needs a good bit of light. Totally different than narrow leaf water sprite. Currently have no duckweed,
Thank you, Buddha
Great video! I will say I am a little disappointed there was no quick PSA at the end or beginning about the invasiveness of some of these species (salvinia, non-Amazon frogbit, watersprite, etc) and how to correctly dispose of them (let it dry out completely and then into a sealed plastic bag - NEVER compost). I think its just important to even remind viewers to check their local banned/invasive species lists.
That being said, my favourite floater you didn't mention is ludwigia sedioides!
you right, especially when I have been sponsored by environmental organizations to make PSA's about invasive plants... and I've worked as an ecologist to prevent this 😭😭 I really just separate my mind from the real world when i'm caught up in this hobby lmao
@@FishForThought Hey thanks for the highlight! It was a great video and hopefully people will take the comment to heart when selecting their plants! May the fish gods spare you the duckweed of penance 😂
There's a hell of a lot of news I want to watch now. But a new vid from you is the obvious priority.
As a nice can-do-all I recommend Lindernia rotundifolia, this plant grows as stemplant in substrate, free floating and goes emers on roots sticking out the tank, also work well in a paludarium ... when floating or emers they develop a lot of cute white blossoms.
Amazingly I managed to kill duckweed with salvinia auriculata, seems it deprived the duckweed of nutrients with its longer roots and fast growth. The duckweed went yellow and disappeared soon after, ofc dont add fertilizer if thats your goal ... being duckweed free for years now.
Redroot floaters are my favorite, my puffer and other shy fish love the red shade under it ... with enough light they really pop and give a nice contrast to green plants in the tank.
awesome and different suggestion!
Unfortunately for us here in Ontario, salvinia has been classified as invasive. Dwarf water lettuce for me!
I really enjoy my banana lily and centella asiatica. Not 'real' floaters but they look really nice! Also, giant duckweed is so different from regular duckweed. Much easier to get rid of when you grow sick of it, longer roots, but not as long as frogbit, and it looks just like a mini version of frogbit from above. Not as common, unfortunately, but an absolute GOAT. Definitely get it when you have the chance!
nice suggestion
Ayyeee another Wednesday vid, we need more of these!
One time I had so much dwarf water lettuce that I gave 2 buckets full of it to a fish store and that was enough to fill around 7 small tanks. If you have good lighting that stuff GROWS,. It's also pretty easy to get it to flower.
I added valisanaria which came in a couple of cheap bunches with pretty much no roots. They have always died on me when planting, instead I just threw them in and left them floating, they've thrived, grown roots and planted themselves to the bottom of the tank and spread.
I put my water lettuce and duckweed in my worm bins and they love it. Or just compost it directly into my planters. They are a good way of storing fish tank nutrients to use in the garden when you accidentally managed your nutrient sponges too well defeating the purpose of water changes being fertilizer for the garden.
Hornwort is the goat! Love it! Need it! Want it! Appreciate it! 😂
Wow
Thank you
A lot of useful information
6:36 been there done that
moved from Duckweed to Salvinia
Now My Niece's turtle has both and doesn't want to eat them anymore XD
I had some Frogbit, but it didn't survive. Note: if you have a Cascade/HoB Filter, separate the waterfall since the top of it HAS TO BE dry or else it will rot. Learnt it the hard way.
And now I'm considering adding that Philodendron to my tank. Even have some idea how to arange the emerse part...
For pothos cutting, best to keep all stems out of water, just keep it above the water with a bubbler underneath. The bubbles popping underneath will keep them moist, and they will not rot that way. Most of my roots are 3-4 inches out of the water. Also I tried with already established roots from dirt, that I washed. Best to do cuttings. The roots that grow into the water are fine but old roots from soil seem to rot eventually as well
Duckweed is crazy man! Mine started with just a pair of leaves that came with my RCS and they took over the tank in just a week. Just completely got rid of mine by installing a wavemaker in my tank. It took a month overall for all the duckweed to drown.
Thanks for this list, man! I've been trying to find the proper floaters for my tanks for a while now! Do you have any sellers you would recommend buying any floaters from?
Pretty much all your climbing variety terrestrial plants are great - plenty of philodendron varieties, syngoniums are fabulous as well and come in a load of different colours to add a little extra oomph if you’re after that! There’s also a few smaller monstera climbing varieties that grow faster then the generic monstera that everyone knows
I never see anyone mention this, but I'm using coleus and pothos together. Coleus is amazing and GORGEOUS. It will root in any water, propagates readily, and comes in a rainbow of colors from white, pink, lime green, purple, orange, red, and black. There are even cultivars which look like seaweed or oak leaves.
I love water sprite! I grow it in my 16 gallon and I'm constantly having to throw some out because of how fast it grows. I also have to trim the roots because it does the same thing as elodea. I have it to thank for my low nitrate!
6k views is abysmal come on youtube this is a great vid 👌
Yay my plant got a shout out
My wife actually loves the Japanese clover can't wait to make a tank just for her
Thanks Chirs I needed that cold shower about hornwort... but my scuds love dead needles :(
Hornwort elodia ambulia and anything that looks similar, disintegrates basically into a powder of sorts and strings.
Elodia is great, unless it dies due to lack of light or when theyre bought as trimming with no roots. Some places sell all these as trimmings, and they will break down while sending out new shoots, so makes a mess turning to debris but also trying to grow. I've gotten elodia with roots, and they've geown amazing, but they do take over a tank in a similar way to valesnaria or dwarf sagetaria, so need some trimming and maintenance, usually a lot sooner than most other aquarium plants.
Why does Chris's Gordon Ramsay sound like a mildly depressed Australian guy...?
Azolla for the floater win. Who can beat the fractal goodness?!?
LMAO
I like to take my hornwort and add a plant weight to the center of them. Looping the long strands of plant back in circles to the weight so it rests on the bottom and presents more like a stem plant.
Once my tank was cycled and i figured out that it doesnt like water movement. Red root floaters have take off for me. Nearly my whole 40 gallon surface is covered in it. Close to throwing some of it away because its blocking out the light
In my community tank there is a beautiful forest of hornwort, it's absolutely thriving. In my shrimp tank it dropped its needles and refused to grow. Probably just up to luck. Red root floaters all died due to high water movement so hornwort is the one for me.
I got hornwort when I worked at Petco, I was told it was super easy. Well, put in my tank. Next few weeks it died and destroyed my beautiful looking tank with the nasty looking needles everywhere. Hate em, but now I have the pretty looking elodia and I’m hoping it survives lol
How’d I mess up and kill duckweed but have a thriving tank with red roots??
You gotta make an update video on all your tanks!
THANKYOU I NEEDED THIS. My amanos ate all frogbit lol so hopefully this helps
Water hyacinth is beautiful and grows similar to water lettuce. Also syngonium can be grown out of the top of the water just like pathos .
Great content - thanks
i got rid of my duckweed, i think via an algae cleanser. or pond treatment. but have not had a single bit in well over 2 years after it was a big headache for 2 years. breaking the surface tension also helped maintain its numbers,
My biggest issue with keeping houseplants growing in my aquarium is my cats think pothos is delicious. It's supposed to be toxic to them but they never throw up or show any ill effects. Any suggestions on keeping them out of it?
Only way I've ever managed to get rid of duck weed once and for all was to completely break the tank down. Rinse and hand screen every plant you intend to reuse before introducing it to the new scape. Then, after everything is said and done keep a extremely close eye on the tank. Check every day for single duckweed leaves that may have snuck in. Remove with tweezers as you see them. It took about two weeks of this to get rid of my duck weed. Never seen it since lol
Great plant, especially for fast cover, fish food, and nutrient export. But it's easily overwhelming. Wonder if giant duckweed is better
Monstera adonsonii is doing ok in the tank but monstera deliciousa absolutely loved the tank! Its roots grew all the way down into the substrate. I ended up taking it out and dirting it since it made such a massive root system
hornwort seems to go through a dormant period. but it's good in a cichlid tank. i used it to great advantage with jack dempseys. rocks on the bottom and a good thicket of hornwort floating at the top.
lol I have a thriving jar of hornwort and snails “for emergencies” but I haven’t encountered an emergency that requires hornwort yet. I guess it’s definitely cycled and I can use it to isolate shrimp or dump the whole thing into a quarantine tub.
The only reason I haven’t put it in a tank is so people don’t think I’m a pleb who needs beginner plants 😤
My first floater was actually red root floaters--in a 10 gallon which I had some shrimp and my since-passed dwarf orange crayfish Taco. They got crazy in that tank and ended up spreading to my 30 gallon where Chaos, my current pet bristlenose pleco and his tankmates now live. They do best in medium light with very little manhandling or flow on a weekly basis, and they seem to benefit from higher mineral and iron content since any attempts of mine to add a piece to my new 10 gallon which is softer and more acidic results in melty nastiness (and very well-fed snails).
Also! Spider plants aren't all that drought-resistant--a lot of people use them because they are so thirsty when planted in soil! They're probably best used in contained hydroponic baskets, though, since the larger, more mature tuberous roots can grow down and get gnarly and entangled in tank objects without something to keep them at the surface.
Chris, i have not had my horn wort drop its leaves.. or needles,
till it was exposed to air and mass droped...
Cuase i broke something in my tank and needed re-glueing
I gotta know what the purple grassy blades are at exactly 10:23 !
Question I recently got a a five gallon tank which I'm not used to since I'm used to 10 or 20 gallons what can I stock in it, it came with a bunch of benefital fish care stuff and water treatment stuff to make the water better for fish technically I have two tanks ones topless one can fit a lid on it. But ultimately I'm looking at what I can put in these tanks I'm obviously going with live plants and some species of fish I was just wondering for suggestions and I'll likely need some form of a clean up crew.
Love, love, love salvinia! I vsll them spangles 😍🌿
Mollies keep my hornwort from looking like a pine tree in fall. But ive mentioned before, hornwort is the only plant my mollies dont completely destroy, maybe its because they drop the needles, and they eat those instead of the living plants.
Cool video thanks for the tip 👍🏽
thank you for another banger video.
Pretty good Gordon Ramsey impression
I love duckweed and any plant that grows like crazy because I can take them out and feed it to my isopod colonies. Free food forever.
and if you grow it in an undisturbed still surface tub, the roots grow very long, maybe 6-8 inches...
I got duckweed „accidentally“ it came with the shrimp I ordered online and for some reason it doesn’t grow as fast as people always say. I had it in for almost two months now and it covers maybe a quarter of my tank
I love hornwort (how dare you!) I cut it off before it disintegrates and feed it to my turtle in a different set-up. Once it looks a little less light green - a little more of that dirty green or brown colour - you have to cut it off, but it makes a great food source. It grows really fast and doesn't completely die off. I have a problem with plants that don't do well and waste my money.
If you’re considering frogbit, check your local wildlife regulations. Frogbit is illegal/invasive here in Michigan 🤙
Duckweed the only aquatic plant i haven't been able to keep alive
Bonus FFT, what could be better? Floaters for thought today i guess lol
I used to almost drown in frogbit but for the last couple of month, the leafs started getting yellow and melting. Roots also almost completely stopped growing. Nothing else changed about my setup, same lights, same stocking, water parameters are constant. The only thing I can think of is that the water provider may have switched something up because I'm having the same issues in the three main tanks (different levels of maturity, so it's not like all the nutrients from the substrate have miraculously disappeared, either). If anyone recognizes the problem or has any idea about the cause/possible solutions, I'm open to advice.
I have a big mixture of salvinia minima, red roots, water lettuce, and accidental duckweed on top of my tank. I also have a huge pothos root ball in there.
For a while I thought my cycle had crashed because my nitrates disappeared, but I finally figured out I just have too many plants and there were no nutrients left and my plants were struggling, so I started dosing with a bit of Seachem flourish… and now I have algae. 😭
Spider plant babies rooted in water do well in water, they don’t make bulbous roots, instead they grow long thin webbing of roots. A rooted spiderplant in soil will have roots adapted to soil. Start with a fresh pup.
I looooove DUCKWEED it's so helpfull to have perfect waterquality, once a week I scoop the most of it out (it takes one minute) and feed it to my crickets, those I feed to my crested gecko, perfect circle of life I guess :D also scoop it out, dry it, grind it to powder, use it as shrimp food, specially for babyshrimp. free food, the best!
I love the long water lettuce in my 5 gallon. The shrimps like to hang out in it
Found out about hortwart the hard way with my first shrimp tank. Lost the whole colony when the needles dropped and my parameters went wild.
yeah it's crazy but ppl out here defending hornwort like it saved their family from a fire
@FishForThought thats how I ended up with it in the first place
The fellow I got my initial shrimp from in Victoria BC gave me the hortwart saying it was in all their tank already and was great
PRO TIP: hornwart needles can slice through fancy guppies tails. Not worth the risk!
Thanks for the warning. I have African dwarf frogs now I don’t want this plant anywhere near them.
@mockfanatik good call!
YALL REPASHY FANCLUB IN THE HOUSEEEE
I tried red root floater 3x and never got it to survive, then i got "a piece of salvinia made it in the bag with you shrimp, are you mad about it?" 2 months later im throwing away salvinia once a week cus it totally covers the surface of a 20 high, a 20 long, and a 36 bowfront
Frogbit is always one of my top choices, if I could only have one plant in a tank it would Frogbit, easily fills an entire tank top to bottom. You left out a really good one though, guppy grass. Also floats, easy to trim and by itself can fill an entire tank, super beginner friendly.
My water sprite doesn't like to stay in the substrate, it looked great for a while, then they eventually kill off the bottom to where they float and start growing out of the water, it's cool but it's just not what I want