Duckweed. Your thoughts?

[RexDarr]

So today I picked up some plants for my 20 gallon aquarium (cardamine and lilaeopsis) and I noticed they had some duckweed floating around in a tank.
At the time I didn't know what it was so I asked the gentleman working in the department and he said that it's duckweed and very good at helping keep the nitrates down in an aquarium. He said that it's becoming harder to order so they might not have it for much longer. I picked up the last bit he had and took it home to my aquarium.
After doing some reading it seems that there's a love/hate relationship with duckweed.
My plan is to breed some mollies and give the fry to my friends once they're big enough to eat flake food. So assuming the fry like to stay at the top of the tank that would be a pro.
It seems that everyone says it grows like crazy and hard to keep up with it. That's obviously a negative.
Anything else I should know about duckweed?


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[ImACoolguy]

I've found that it does best in tanks with very little surface agitation. I could not for the life of my get this invasive plant to multiply till my brother put some between a divider where there was no flow pushing it around.

Most don't like how fast it grows but if you like it then it's your tank whatever floats your boat


Caleb

[Nils]

I like it, gross fast and gives the shrimp and fish hiding places. There are lots of other floaters out there, but I love duckweed. But once it's in your fish room, it is literally impossible to get out. It will always get in the tanks no matter what. So good luck, I like it!

[TheresaM]

With duckweed I've found that a little-even the tiniest bit-goes a long way quickly! When I had it free-floating in my Endlers tank I was removing 1-2 large scoops every week. Added a plant guard to at least keep it contained to 1 part of the tank.

I like dwarf water lettuce because it's a bit larger and doesn't multiply so quickly, but it's really a matter of personce preference

[Exigenn]

For the life of me i could not get this stuff to grow lol, no problems with other plants. I wanted it to grow as well =/.

[Atxpunx]

I've heard that growing Val species in the same tank will kill off duckweed. A form of allelopathy if you will. So if it becomes a problem grow some vals.


Cha boi Jessie.

[TheresaM]

Originally Posted by Atxpunx

I've heard that growing Val species in the same tank will kill off duckweed. A form of allelopathy if you will. So if it becomes a problem grow some vals.

That's funny because the tank where I have the duckweed problem is only planted with vals, quite heavily actually.