Duckweed acting strange

[buildingaqua]

I just recently added this floating 3d printed ring to keep the duckweed out of my HOB filter stream, and now the duckweed won’t float upright, and there’s a lot of debris attached to the roots of it. I can tell it has to do with the floating ring I used, but everyone says that having surface agitation is bad for duckweed… Is there anything I can do to fix this? 

[Tony s]

they should be okay with just hob. they won't grow near the stream. but they should be fine in the rest of the tank. hob filter streams only cover that small area and then most of the flow is straight down. one of the problems with hobs is they produce a vertical flow near them and not much lateral flow. so almost perfect for duckweed

and they should grow back hopefully? depends if you want them or not🤣

[MattyM]

Do you have a picture? Does the ring move around or is it anchored?  

I've only been able to grow duckweed in areas of a tank that are practically stagnant, and have access to plenty of nutrients and decent lighting. Then again, my betta tank has these conditions and all the duckweed went away (which I'm actually fine with, I never wanted it, it just showed up one day - prob from a plant purchase). My betta tank is also 81F and has a lid that drips condensation all day, maybe duckweed doesn't like that either. 

[buildingaqua]

The only other thing I was worried about is that the color of the duckweed is starting to fade, and there seems to be algae growing on some of the roots, could this mean it’s dying out? 
 

I have been treating the tank for ich recently and it may be entirely possible that the daily 30% water changes could be lowering the available nutrients… 

[buildingaqua]

On 3/25/2024 at 5:16 PM, MattyM said:

Do you have a picture? Does the ring move around or is it anchored?  

I've only been able to grow duckweed in areas of a tank that are practically stagnant, and have access to plenty of nutrients and decent lighting. Then again, my betta tank has these conditions and all the duckweed went away (which I'm actually fine with, I never wanted it, it just showed up one day - prob from a plant purchase). My betta tank is also 81F and has a lid that drips condensation all day, maybe duckweed doesn't like that either. 

The ring is hooked around the intake pipe, and because of its square shape it usually barely moves. The water the duckweed is in is completely stagnant, even to the extent that a film starts appearing in the spaces on the surface of the water after a day. The duckweed seems to be getting more than plenty light as well, so it must be the nutrients. I’ll make sure to dose some more fertilizers. 

On 3/25/2024 at 6:46 PM, buildingaqua said:

The ring is hooked around the intake pipe, and because of its square shape it usually barely moves. The water the duckweed is in is completely stagnant, even to the extent that a film starts appearing in the spaces on the surface of the water after a day. The duckweed seems to be getting more than plenty light as well, so it must be the nutrients. I’ll make sure to dose some more fertilizers. 

I will send pictures shortly

[buildingaqua]

On 3/25/2024 at 5:16 PM, MattyM said:

Do you have a picture? Does the ring move around or is it anchored?  

I've only been able to grow duckweed in areas of a tank that are practically stagnant, and have access to plenty of nutrients and decent lighting. Then again, my betta tank has these conditions and all the duckweed went away (which I'm actually fine with, I never wanted it, it just showed up one day - prob from a plant purchase). My betta tank is also 81F and has a lid that drips condensation all day, maybe duckweed doesn't like that either. 

 

[buildingaqua]

Anyone know what could be causing this?

 

[MattyM]

Is algae attaching itself to your duckweed? 

[Tanked]

You have a lot of algae, and it does look like it is on the roots along with the debris.  Because of this, it is reasonable  that the algae and Duckweed are competing for nutrients.  The browning could also be sunburn.  It may be just an illusion, but the algae on either end of the aquarium looks healthier.

Surface tension is holding the bubbles in the duckweed because that water is not moving on the surface.  It could also be from a contaminant, your water conditioner, ammonia, etc.

I don't think your water is as stagnant as you think it is.  Some of the sideways Duckweed could be trapped in the surface film or actually moved by the water.  Your side mounted filter is moving water down and across the tank until it circles around. I don't know if the DW inside the ring is left over from when you installed the ring, or it got blown over or under the ring.  Either way it looks good, and I'm a big fan of the side mounted filters.

Take all of this with a grain of salt, because it is coming from someone who struggles to grow Duckweed. My best efforts so far are inside a protective ring, behind a floating mass of Hornwort.🦆

[buildingaqua]

On 3/28/2024 at 7:12 PM, Tanked said:

You have a lot of algae, and it does look like it is on the roots along with the debris.  Because of this, it is reasonable  that the algae and Duckweed are competing for nutrients.  The browning could also be sunburn.  It may be just an illusion, but the algae on either end of the aquarium looks healthier.

Surface tension is holding the bubbles in the duckweed because that water is not moving on the surface.  It could also be from a contaminant, your water conditioner, ammonia, etc.

I don't think your water is as stagnant as you think it is.  Some of the sideways Duckweed could be trapped in the surface film or actually moved by the water.  Your side mounted filter is moving water down and across the tank until it circles around. I don't know if the DW inside the ring is left over from when you installed the ring, or it got blown over or under the ring.  Either way it looks good, and I'm a big fan of the side mounted filters.

Take all of this with a grain of salt, because it is coming from someone who struggles to grow Duckweed. My best efforts so far are inside a protective ring, behind a floating mass of Hornwort.🦆

I ended up taking out some of the duckweed today, and it seemed to help with the problem of the sideways ones, but I did notice a lot of dead white leaves among the duckweed so I’m gonna take some water to my LFS to get it tested to see if I’m lacking in any nutrients. 
 

The duckweed inside the ring is just from times I’ve accidentally bumped the ring down for a second and some of the DW got through, but this doesn’t happen super often luckily because I’m pretty careful. 

[JeremyChristian]

On 3/29/2024 at 8:19 AM, buildingaqua said:

I ended up taking out some of the duckweed today, and it seemed to help with the problem of the sideways ones, but I did notice a lot of dead white leaves among the duckweed so I’m gonna take some water to my LFS to get it tested to see if I’m lacking in any nutrients. 
 

The duckweed inside the ring is just from times I’ve accidentally bumped the ring down for a second and some of the DW got through, but this doesn’t happen super often luckily because I’m pretty careful. 











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Edited April 24 by JeremyChristian

[buildingaqua]

On 4/10/2024 at 7:58 AM, JeremyChristian said:

Thanks for the update.

Sorry! I did end up getting my water tested, and it turns out that the ich x I used in my tank 100% crashed my cycle, and my tank had 2.0 ppm of ammonia. I kind of feel like an idiot for not noticing it, but all you can do is move forward so I took out ~80% of the duckweed that was dead. I was able to completely restart my cycle to normal again, and now the small patch of duckweed I have left looks very green and healthy and is all floating normally. Most if not all the algae that was in my tank died off and is now at a completely reasonable level.