I love duckweed. I have no worries of it getting in my tanks. I could never grow enough of it. Since I kept many types of fish there was always a tank of fish very hungry for duckweed. If you have any plant eating fish in some of your tanks, all you have to do is net all you can off of any tank you do not want it in each week and feed the duckweed to your other fish as long as all tanks are healthy. I have been thinking about setting up a tank just to grow duckweed and daphnia but that makes it hard to catch the daphnia.
You need a quick growing plant for trays of egg layer fry like killies. I use daphnia as a live food that would live in fresh water and they also clean bacteria out of the water. In these small trays with very small fry I have had problems with trying to filter/airate them. Java moss and duck weed help remove nitrates and amonia.
Java moss is a must for any fry tank. I have a bit of helpful advice for its use. Cut it up when planting a new tank. Cut the pieces about 1 1/2 inches. Then gently pull it apart. Then reball it or make a mat out of it and place it in the tank. I normally sprinkle some tank gravel over it to hold it in place where I want it to stay. The reason for doing this is each piece will build new buds and start growing. If you place a ball of it in your tank only the tips grow with some branching. This way every piece grows a tip and starts growing for a quicker thick ball. If you chop it up to fine it will not hold together and you end up with moss growing all over the tank.
Later, John
Duckweed can be very difficult to keep up with especially when caring for fry at the same time. It also doesn't offer much shelter for fry, the roots seldom grow more than 1 - 1 1/2 inches below the water level, forcing fry to stay at the top of the tank to find any shelter, and the roots seldom get dense enough to offer much real protection from predatory adults or other tank mates the way the other plants will.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
No comments:
Post a Comment