Why can't I keep floating plants alive?

Caol Ila
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As above, really. I had Amazon frogbit in the 240L tank, and salvinia in the 125L tank, and it's all but disappeared. There are planted plants in the substrate, and they are more or less fine. Soft water, PH of 6.6-ish.

Any ideas? Should I try different species?
Zebra Fish
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I always struggled because I had too high of a flow which would ruin the roots or I'd get the leaves wet which a lot of the floating plants can't deal with. Maybe that's what's going on with you??
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Martinspuddle
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Zebra Fish wrote: Tue Jan 14, 2020 0:00 am I always struggled because I had too high of a flow which would ruin the roots or I'd get the leaves wet which a lot of the floating plants can't deal with. Maybe that's what's going on with you??
Got it in one!

Frogbit is found in slow moving or stagnant water, originally found in Brazil it is also found in other places around the world via man's interference.

It doesn't do well in high flow aquariums, lower temperatures or under poor lighting.

You could try using a floating airline ring attached by sucker to the glass and put the plants within that ring to stop them rushing around the tank. Might work, never had a problem with growing it, if anything I used to throwing handfuls of it away because it grew so fast.
Last edited by Martinspuddle on Wed Jan 15, 2020 4:14 am, edited 1 time in total.
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F3l1ss
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What's your set-up like? Are your fish eating it/the roots?
Caol Ila
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I have a fair bit of flow at the surface of my tanks, and plants do get thrown around. I've seen the fish in the smaller tank nibbling at it but the ones in the big one didn't bother.

For a wee while, the salvinia in the 125L was looking really good. Could I have killed it bashing it around with a syphon during water changes?
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fr499y
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Wouldn't of thought that would do it. Is the light close to the surface? that and loads of flow can be a killer.
Caol Ila
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What's an airline ring? Googling leads to some interesting but not very enlightening results.
Zebra Fish
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Just a type of divider you can make to either make space around the splashing water or to keep the plants at a quieter end of the tank. I've done it before with suction cups and sewing string or fishing line :)

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Danmassey
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Yeah I'm currently employing the suction cups and fish line method. Too bad my honey gourami have munched their way through all the roots!
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Sixo
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I've done the airtube/sucker combination before and it's worked pretty well (if you get good quality tubing & sicker), but for easiness now I just use a floating pond feeder ring does the trick and is barely visible once you get some decent growth.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Laguna-Floatin ... th=1&psc=1

There are cheaper ones available but the thats the one I use.
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