lead free plant weights

[KittenFishMom]

Last night I was looking at some white ceramic rings that came out of a filter. I found I could carefully stuff an air hose through the ones with wider holes for my scud and brine shrimp tanks. I also pushed stems from floating plants through the rings with smaller holes, and now have a forest of hornwort and other plants growing from the bare bottom tank.  They will look much better once I cover them with soil.

[Native Keeper]

I will have to try this, I tried growing hornwort before, but the messiness of its shed always discourages me from trying to grow it again.

[KittenFishMom]

@HydraSlayer Scuds LOVE hornwort. They will clean up the leaves that drop.

[Native Keeper]

@KittenFishMom, do you know of any fish that will eat the dead leaves? If not it's fine, cuz I have collected those before, never knew they ate hornwort! Might set up a native invert tank with them in there and some hornwort.

[Atitagain]

Really good idea , I’ve tided Java moss to them and they work great. But never thought of using for stem plants. 👍

[KittenFishMom]

I would guess that algae eaters might eat them as they break down. 

Scuds to help keep tanks tidy. I have them in 2 tanks. (unless the bullheads wiped them out.). I have several scud colonies right now because I wasn't having good luck in the beginning. I feed them hornwort and microwave sliced pumpkin. We sliced and froze the fresh pumpkin around Halloween. I also toss in bits of fish food. They really seem to do well in my slope buckets I use for cleaning sponge filters and vacuuming the bottom of the tank.  I keep a sunken air hose with light air going.  Also a bit of banana now and then. They hide in the bottom. so I put small pebbles in the corners of the tanks, covered with larger flat stones to protect the scuds from the fish.  The fish like snacking on them as a live food supplement.  The scuds learn to hide very quickly, I don't know how they know it is safe to swim around in the buckets and not in the tanks with the fish.