Floating plant help

[FriendlyGeek]

Hi everyone,
Just a quick question if I may?
We have been growing our floating plants which has up to this point been a success, but we are starting to get problems with them dying off.
Basically the output from the filter is pushing all the floating plants to one end of the aquarium and because there are more of them, they are all clogging up and getting tangled up in eachother. The result of which is some of them with smaller leaves being pretty much buried by the others and they turn yellowy and eventually just die off
We have tried using some clear tubing to try and contain them, which worked really well for a while. But now they don't seem to keep the plants in place, the plants manage to get undermneath the tubing somehow
With past floating plants that we have had, they simply push against eachother and come to a stop, creating a nice even covering. But with these ones they are pushing underneath eachother if that makes sense?
I didn't think to take pictures beforehand so will try and get some over the weekend

 

[Ellie Potts]

What kind of plants are they? You may be able to fix this by moving your filter or somehow diverting/lessening the flow. It also can be good to replace some of your current plants with bigger ones that will be more resistant to the flow and perhaps able to block some of the smaller ones from it.

 

[Byron]

This is one reason why I like Water Sprite (Ceratopteris cornuta) so much. It grows fronds [= leaves] that will easily extend from one side of the tank to the other, and with enough of them this stabilizes their moving about and problem solved.

Frogbit and Water Lettuce in time do the same. Small floaters like Salvinia do not have this ability.

 

[FriendlyGeek]

The plants are either water sprite or water wysteria - they look very similar so I don't know which!

And that is sort of the problem, a couple of the plants are large and the leaves easily span the width of the tank from front to back.
But when the filter pushes the smaller plants around, they snag on these larger leaves and end up getting pushed underneath them, rather than sitting alongside them. So the larger plants are doing really well, but the smaller ones are not getting a chance to take off

Moving the filter is not an option because it is an external with pre-made holes, so the outputs are fixed. We have tried to re-angle the actual flow output, but this didn't seem to help

Perhaps we just need to let nature take it's course so the stronger plants will make it and the weaker ones won't

 

[Byron]

I always had filter returns at one end of a tank, and then did what I could to ensure the force of the water return was not more than necessary. Aiming the return into the end wall, having a standing chunk of bogwood weakening it. there aree a few options to try.

 

[BrianK]

Put the tubing around the filter output rather than around the plants.

 

[sharkweek178]

Hi everyone,
Just a quick question if I may?
We have been growing our floating plants which has up to this point been a success, but we are starting to get problems with them dying off.
Basically the output from the filter is pushing all the floating plants to one end of the aquarium and because there are more of them, they are all clogging up and getting tangled up in eachother. The result of which is some of them with smaller leaves being pretty much buried by the others and they turn yellowy and eventually just die off
We have tried using some clear tubing to try and contain them, which worked really well for a while. But now they don't seem to keep the plants in place, the plants manage to get undermneath the tubing somehow
With past floating plants that we have had, they simply push against eachother and come to a stop, creating a nice even covering. But with these ones they are pushing underneath eachother if that makes sense?
I didn't think to take pictures beforehand so will try and get some over the weekend

What kind of filter are you using?

 

[FriendlyGeek]

The filter is the external Fluval 307 that came with the set up

Put the tubing around the filter output rather than around the plants.

We have tried this over the weekend and it seems to be working!
There is nowhere near as much bunching now so we will leave it like this and see how things go. It's only really until the smaller plants grow out a little and are big enough to stand up for themselves and not get pushed around by the bigger guys

 

[otterblue]

This might help:

How to Reduce Aquarium Filter Flow


I also fill my tank very high and it seems to reduce the pushing factor on the floating plants.