Floating Plant Ideas

[Twinklecaz]

Hiya, I've tried two types of floating plant and not had a lot of luck with them to be honest. First I have Amazonian Frogbite which eventually just disappeared and now I have Mini Water Lettuce which isn't doing loads better.

All my other plants (Amazon Sword, Pygmy Chain Sword, Cambomba and another Crypt who's name I can't remember) are doing ok now. Well, the Cambomba could be doing better but it's not awful. I dose with TPN+ and Easy Carbo every few days and the PH in my tank is 6.7 ish. My tap PH is 7.5 so to be honest I wouldn't call my PH exactly stable, I'll prob be saying it's something else next week.

My light is 15W and on for 8 hours a day.

Is there a floating plant more suited to me or is it something I'm doing wrong?

 

[PDSimon]

Just so you know, for easycarbo to be worthwhile you should dose everyday, or possibly atleast every 2 days. It has a short half-life, can't quite remember exactly, 12 or 24 hours I think. You shouldn't really overdose it, not too much anyway, unlike TPN+ which you can dose weekly (although better daily)

I couldn't grow frogbit either, plus some other floating plant so I gave up so can't answer your main question sorry

 

[Twinklecaz]

LOl! I would give up but my Gouramis need it really.

Yeah I know it's meant to be daily but i stopped doing it daily when I had the dodgy water readings to work out what was causing it. I should start again really I spose.

 

[elisew]

I currently have Salvinia natans and Phyllanthus Fluitans floating in my tank. The Salvinia seems to be much hardier out of the 2 and is multiplying really quickly. The fish seem to love the dense roots on them and they give plenty of cover.
The Phyllanthus fluitans are a thinner leaved plant that gets moved around more with the flow from my filter outlet but some of it has nice pinky red colouring to it in places.

 

[RadaR]

Probably lack of nutrients.
Light and CO2 arent a problem. They're at the surface of the water, getting the highest light intensity. Also, they're getting lots of CO2 from the atmosphere. So we can rule both these out.
Increase the TPN+ dosage. When you dose the liquid carbon, dont do it next to the floating plants. Dose it just below the surface into some flow. A pipette helps with this.

 

[Twinklecaz]

Thanks guys!

Can I just clear something up...the bad water readings you can get from using TPN+ - they are fake readings aren't they? I mean, they don't actually put Ammonia/Nitrite in the water?

 

[PDSimon]

I think it puts ammonium into the water, which is much less toxic than ammonia but will show up on ammonia tests. Thats why its a confusing reading I think you'd struggle to overdose the tank with appropriate dosing and good weekly waterchanges

 

[RadaR]

Yeah, it's a false reading. Of which I've never seen to be honest.

 

[Twinklecaz]

Really? Though I haven't in a while but that's hard to know if that's coz I've cut the doseage down or coz I had genuine Ammonia probs.