Floating plants?

[Sweets1023]

I've had my betta fish and his two snail buddies in a 10 gallon for about 2 and a half months now. They're all happy and healthy. I have mostly silk plants in the tank. But I've been starting to add a few low light, easy care, plants into the tank. Currently I only have one small java fern in the tank, I plan to add 1 more java fern, and a few anubias nanas down in front. Due to the strong output from my HOB filter I have a silk plant in front of the current to lighten it a bit. Which works quite well. I was wondering if there are any low light live plants that are/can be floating plants that I can replace the silk one with. Any help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated. TY all =)

 

[joy13]

What kind of light do you have? I know I have a couple of those CF and can grow most any of the floating plants like red rooted floaters, frogbit, salvania and water lettuce.

 

[kellyinvancouver]

I added salvinia and water lettuce to my 5.5 gal betta tank... I find it awesome for shade-loving creatures such as bettas (it is also great bubble-nesting material). Since it drifts around the tank, it never shadows out one plant for too long.

Water lettuce has nice, long feathery roots but I found that salvinia roots just sort of have a green, fuzzy appearance... you can google them and judge for yourself. I thin my salvinia out alot so that the top of my tank doesn't look like an algae bloom.

A WORD OF CAUTION: Be ultra-careful when buying floaters from a pond and never pick them out of the wild... I am currently eradicating dragonfly larvae, pond snails, and possible gill flukes, all of which were hitch-hiking on the plants I recieved from a friend's pond!

Give 'em a good soak in carbonated water, salted water or a coppersafe-lookalike to kill everything... I was impatient and didn't soak mine long enough.

(P.S. I am growing them with definite success under 15W in my 5.5 and 30W in my 10... they are also growing well in my craigslist 20g, which has an ancient 18W tube that I haven't gotten around to replacing yet)


Good luck with the plants!

--Kelly.

 

[Sweets1023]

it says:
-20" Flourescent
-120 volt
-18 watt
-60 hz
on the back of the light, I've kept various low light plants successfully with the current lighting I have with no issue. I'm not looking to grow my self an aquatic jungle or anything, just want to keep plants alive and healthy. =) I have no intention of upgrading the lighting in this particular tank. I'm saving the whole aquatic jungle awesome looking planted tank thing for my 20 gallon long project =)

 

[joy13]

You might beable to get by with something like the salvania.