How Can I Get Rid Of Duck Weed

[Tacklebury]

Hi all, not been around for a while, work, life etc....

Anyway. A few months ago now I brought some plants of a member here and they arrived with some duck weed included. At the time I didn't realise the pain it would be come in the future! I find my RIO 240 gets covered in around 3-4 weeks if I strain off as much as possible.

Is there any way I can get rid of this pest of a plant!!!

 

[Ben M]

hi, i've never found any way of getting rid of it then scooping it all out. if you don't have any other floating plants then it isn't too hard, but if (like me) you have other floating plants, it's a right pain. i had to take all of my dwarf water lettuce out of my tank, pick off all of the duckweed, and then put all of the dwarf water lettuce back in. took hours.

cheers

 

[OldMan47]

If you allow the nitrogen in the water to go very low, it will all die off. It is not only a nitrogen sponge for your tank but will not survive being deprived of nitrogen. Another easy cure that I use is to have it in my tank with the rainbow cichlids, Herotilapia multispinosa. I dumped a full cup of the plants into my 120 gallon just a week ago and now I can only find a few dozen leaves in the tank. Those guys go crazy for it. I actually bought some on purpose at a local club auction because I have fed it to them before and it brings them into breeding condition. My love / hate relationship with duckweed means that I try to grow it in many of my tanks but the ones with vigorous plant growth and no artificial fertilizers seem to end up with none of it growing in a fairly short time. The tanks that only have a few plants to pull out nutrients seem to maintain and even grow more duckweed. With those hungry rainbow cichlids, I often skim all that I can from another tank and feed it to them to get them breeding. From what I hear, goldfish are almost as efficient at removing duckweed as the rainbow cichlids.