Floaters id

[Furbs]

I made the beginner mistake of just buying a bunch of floaters off offer up with out asking what was in it. 
this big one with the yellowing leaf? 

 

 

hoping this isn’t duckweed but I’m pretty sure the tiny leaves here are 

 

this maybe my dwarf water lettuce? The two large ones to the right 

 

 

and then a general question. I keep ready they prefer still water but are the bubbles from two sponge filters going to be that detrimental to the plants? Do I need to try and put a coral around the bubbles or something to protect them. 

[knee]

The first one is amazon frogbit, not sure on the second one but it does look like duckweed and the last one dwarf water lettuce.

 

Can I see the roots on the second one?

[Furbs]

On 2/23/2023 at 6:38 PM, knee said:

The first one is amazon frogbit, not sure on the second one but it does look like duckweed and the last one dwarf water lettuce.

 

Can I see the roots on the second one?

I ended up trying to fish all that one out as it did look like duckweed too after a little more digging. Some of them had a single 1cm stem others were just a single leaf.

 

 

ended up figuring out all my red root floaters are being pushed under by the spangles though. 

[Odd Duck]

1. Confirming Amazon frogbit

2. Confirming duckweed

3. Confirming dwarf water lettuce

4. Some floaters are more sensitive than others to water on top of the leaves but none of them like it as far as I know (except maybe duckweed, it don’t care about nothin’).  Red roots tend to be moderately sensitive to very light spatter, intensely sensitive to heavy spatter, heavy dripping, or constant wetness on their upper surface.  If they get dense enough growth, they will cover the surface so much there is no spatter from an airstone.  If they get that dense, you can have significant die off of plants underneath them, then it risks a full tank crash - ask me how I know.  😢

Duckweed doesn’t care, it will survive the apocalypse, thank you.  It easily survives being frequently submersed by an HOB filter outflow and will come back fighting strong.

I haven’t personally grown spangles or dwarf water lettuce so someone else will have to speak to their sensitivity level to splashing.

You can do a corral to keep the plants away from the bubbles.  It’s a good idea to prevent full coverage of the tank surface anyway since too many floaters at dense coverage can potentially limit gas exchange at the surface of the water.

[Lennie]

On 2/24/2023 at 7:33 PM, Odd Duck said:

1. Confirming Amazon frogbit

2. Confirming duckweed

3. Confirming dwarf water lettuce

I have them all including salvinia in my tanks. +1 to this

About the splashing part, I think all floating plants are fragile to water splashes accumilating on them. I think generally it is good to say floating plants don't like flow and being wet.

If I were you, I would try to eliminate all duckweeds I find in the tank, you have beautiful plants. Duckweed grows much faster than any others, may compete them for nutrition and can be very hard to eliminate after some time. Just get rid of it. 

Here I am tagging a video part that you may find an answer to your questions regarding all floaters. hope it helps!

 

[Furbs]

On 2/24/2023 at 8:33 AM, Odd Duck said:

 

4. Some floaters are more sensitive than others to water on top of the leaves but none of them like it as far as I know   

You can do a corral to keep the plants away from the bubbles.  It’s a good idea to prevent full coverage of the tank surface anyway since too many floaters at dense coverage can potentially limit gas exchange at the surface of the water.

That brings me to my next question. If I’m pulling them all out to do my water changes once, sometimes twice a week, is that going to be problematic. In that case I’ll have to cut the population down enough to give myself a decent working area with out disturbing them.

 

I’ll do some more research on gas exchange. My thought process was they would eat up the co2 difference and I still have sponge filters injecting o2 

[EmmaFish]

On second picture the leaves are salvinia minima/water spangles; it grows like a weed

Edited February 24, 2023 by EmmaFish

[Odd Duck]

On 2/24/2023 at 1:48 PM, Furbs said:

That brings me to my next question. If I’m pulling them all out to do my water changes once, sometimes twice a week, is that going to be problematic. In that case I’ll have to cut the population down enough to give myself a decent working area with out disturbing them.

 

I’ll do some more research on gas exchange. My thought process was they would eat up the co2 difference and I still have sponge filters injecting o2 

I don’t pull anything out unless there’s an excess and I either move some to a different tank, sell some, or throw some away.  But I do generally keep them at least somewhat contained in floating rings.  Or at least keep them thinned down enough there is at least 1/3 of the tank as open water surface.

They don’t appear to add much O2 to the water although you’ll see that mentioned in nearly all the articles about them.  I think they do most if not all of their transpiration through their upper leaf surfaces since they don’t have stomata on the underside of their leaves.  This is why when they choke the entire surface it will reduce the oxygen in the water.  They definitely aren’t pulling much CO2 out of the water, they’re pulling it from the air where it is far more abundant.  That’s one of the reasons that floaters can grow so quickly because they have access to air/CO2.  If you have enough circulation under them so they are constantly moving around on the surface and they aren’t a solid blanket of leaves, it’s a non-issue.  But let them get to where they are piled up on each other in a thick layer and the surface isn’t moving around, and you’ll likely end up with problems, potentially serious problems.

Yes, your sponge filter puts oxygen into the water, but it’s because those bubbles are stirring the water, not because there’s a bunch of gas exchange directly from each bubble surface.  The bubbles are causing lift and pulling water from lower layers up to the surface where it gets rid of CO2 and absorbs oxygen.  Oxygen levels in water are about surface agitation and water circulation, not about the actual bubbles moving through the water.  Yes, smaller bubbles have more surface area, but they’re still working to increase oxygen by providing more lift and much needed water circulation.  There isn’t enough gas exchange through the wall of the bubbles to make more than a trace of difference in dissolved oxygen levels if any.

This is why you can achieve excellent oxygenation without any bubbles moving through the water.  Think of a mountain stream tumbling over rocks.  Yes, there will be a few bubbles created in some spots, but it’s all about the water mixing, churning, and tumbling and never having a film of oil or protein across the surface of the water.  Saltwater holds even less oxygen than freshwater but the salt people aren’t injecting any bubbles (salt spatter is stupid hard to clean off and ridiculously corrosive).  They use essentially what are underwater fans plus various water pumps to create currents that keep the water moving.

On 2/24/2023 at 2:56 PM, EmmaFish said:

On second picture the leaves are salvinia minima/water spangles; it grows like a weed

The large leaves are, but the question in that pic was about the very small leaves which are duckweed.

[Furbs]

On 2/24/2023 at 1:56 PM, Odd Duck said:

 

They don’t appear to add much O2 to the water although you’ll see that mentioned in nearly all the articles about them.  I think they do most if not all of their transpiration through their upper leaf surfaces since they don’t have stomata on the underside of their leaves.  This is why when they choke the entire surface it will reduce the oxygen in the water.  They definitely aren’t pulling much CO2 out of the water, they’re pulling it from the air where it is far more abundant.  That’s one of the reasons that floaters can grow so quickly because they have access to air/CO2.  If you have enough circulation under them so they are constantly moving around on the surface and they aren’t a solid blanket of leaves, it’s a non-issue.  But let them get to where they are piled up on each other in a thick layer and the surface isn’t moving around, and you’ll likely end up with problems, potentially serious problems.

Yes, your sponge filter puts oxygen into the water, but it’s because those bubbles are stirring the water, not because there’s a bunch of gas exchange directly from each bubble surface.  

This was greatly useful thank you. They have grown like crazy this last week so I cut them down to less than half the surface pulling out much of the salvinia to give the rest a shot at thriving and help get to that normal gas exchange