Duckweed, problem solver?

[Wahter]

Let me tell you two reasons to skip on using duckweed.

1.) although it floats, everytime you stick your hand/ arm into the tank (cleaning, etc...) and then pull out, you'll have lots of the plants clinging to your arms. This also goes for nets, hoses, etc...

2.) it takes a LOT of work to get it out of a tank - when I had it in my tanks, I had to skim it out everyday for several days. It was growing too well and blocking out the light.

Water sprite is much friendly!

Hope that helps,


Walter

[LizStreithorst]

Greetings folks,

Let me answer some of these posts in this single posting.

Graham... ideas or suggestions might come up in one forum but continued discussion would be inappropriate for the original forum so I moved to discussion of plants to the plant forum, discussion of water quality to the water quality forum etc. as a former moderator of forum's I always appreciated that folks did that on there own, it saved me time and effort of moving their posts to the more appropriate forum.

As you know most koi ponds, at least the ones that I'm familiar with, are overstocked causing serious problems and challenges for their keeper. I'm talking about a balanced discus aquarium that is not overloaded. I have avoided live plants and now reconsidering that that might be a mistake on my part. Primarily for the elimination of nitrate.

phidelt... thank you for your suggestion of a hydroponic setup, I grew miniature roses for 25 years, commercially, utilizing some of those techniques. I'm familiar with them but somehow it escaped my mind... thank you again. This project that I'm involved in is trying to have a balance discus aquarium in which water changes occurred only once every six months. I think this is something that a lot of people would like to do, so they can enjoy the fish are with less maintenance.

I used 100% ro water properly balance mostly with Kent products. Starting off with 100% near-perfect water should be a place to start a project like this. The challenge is keeping it that way

Kindredspirit... water changes are not simple they are messy and time-consuming, this is exactly what I'm trying to get away from. But Thank you for your comments.

B-O-F ... I have no experience with the secondary tanks it does sound intriguing and I will research that aspect, thank you for your comments... very helpful.

Al... this is exactly the kind of information and I find the most useful. Someone who actually walked the walk. In further research I found little roots are a problem with duckweed, sounds like more trouble than its worth, I will research water sprite. I have copied your post and will carry through with researching the "refugium" project.

Seecher,
To be honest. I'm sure that most of us here think that you're "pissin' in the wind". Still, I'll be quite interested in watching your experiment. Will you be documenting it with photographs? I hope I don't see any skinny Discus.