What Is The Best Floating Plant?

[B2k2]

Hi,

I've seen many different types of floating plants available on ebay and other sites but I'm not to sure what is best. I dont want to buy anything that is going to take over my tank as obviously this is going to block out light for my other plants. The plants I have seen are Butterfly Fern (Salvinia rotundifolia), Giant Salvinia (Salvinia molesta), Water Lettuce (Pistia stratiotes ) and Bladderwort (Utricularia Gibba). Would you recommend any of these? or have any other plants you could recommend?

Also if you live in the UK please could you tell me what sites you use for buying plants online?

 

[jimbooo]

riccia fluitians is a lovely plant, naturally a floating plant that will thrive in almost any tank, can be submerged to form a carpet if you have over 2WPG and co2.

heres a link with pics - obviously you wouldn't need to submerge it, just throw it in the tank

 

[BigC]

Believe me Salvinia will take over your tank. Very fast growing. It blocks waterways in the wild so your tank is a mere drop in the ocean to it so to speak. I use it for breeding Killifish such as Ps. annulatus and to deter larger Killifish from jumping out of their tanks. Not really what you are looking for. Riccia as already mentioned sounds a better choice.
Regards
BigC

 

[kenneth_kpe]

jimboo is the riccia man and if you dont want the excess riccia its easy to just rip it apart and discard....

 

[B2k2]

Riccia it is then... might have some floating and some submerged.

Thanks guys

 

[mifty12]

Riccia it is then... might have some floating and some submerged.

Thanks guys

I must say i didn't like riccia very much,took ages to grow to any worth and kept breaking apart. I've got some freshwater lillies in my tank now and they look great. They only have a leaf diameter of about fouir inches and its really easy to kep under control.