Strange floating ball algae, intermixed with my Asian Water Moss

[Magnum Man]

I’ve not seen this before… to the naked eye, it almost looks like duckweed ( it’s not lemna minor anyway )… 1st picture is from below…

2nd picture is on a long handled spoon with 1/8 inch holes, for scale, ( so the individual balls are tiny ), that I use to move around a the floating plants

 

[Magnum Man]

There was this new “super food” that was a tiny duckweed, but it’s not native to the US, so I’ve never seen that in person…

 

[CassCats]

Wolffia - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Most commonly called watermeal

 

[Magnum Man]

Nailed it

 

[Magnum Man]

Guessing it’s even harder der to get rid of than lemna minor… but I also bet my Tilapia would gobble that stuff up, and in a well lit tank, it seems to reproduce as fast or faster than duckweed

 

[CassCats]

Yeah I heard it can be a pain if it establishes in a tank. I've not been successful with it myself though haha it's kinda neat but I could imagine the mess

 

[Magnum Man]

It’s doing really well in this one tank… there must have been some mixed in, with some of the watermoss I bought… I can separate it, but it’s a slow process… I’ve never had it in any of my tanks before… I haven’t seen the Zebra Oto’s eating it, that are in this tank, normal algae eaters aren’t typically top feeders… makes me wonder if I separated some, and put it in my Hillstream tank, if they would learn to feed on it??

 

[Magnum Man]

A little reading… it likes quiet waters, this is a really high flow tank, but the water moss forms a mat, and it seems to like to fill in the gaps so to speak, and gets protection from the flow, amongst the moss… I have an 8 inch floating plant ring above an Anubis that needs a tad more light than it as getting, with the water moss mat over the top of that part of the tank, and that ring seems to separate the algae out, or it grows really well in that space, as I’m using that long handled spoon to clear the ring, and 90% of what I scoop out is the algae balls

 

[Magnum Man]

As long as I keep the floating plant ring free of the water moss, several of the African Tetras, have begun feeding on the water meal, they won’t go up and pick it out of the water moss mat, but are now regularly feeding on it, where it’s free of the water moss

 

[Magnum Man]

So far the only ones I’ve witnessed eating the algae balls are the…
Alestopetersius caudalis
Phenacogrammus aurantiacus
Bathyaethiops breuseghemi

So it’s possible these include more green in their diet, or are just most aggressive eaters…
The floating plant ring ( positioned to allow more light on my Anubis ), seems to be pretty good at separating the algae from the moss… it holds back the bigger moss, and with the current in this tank, the wolffia finds its way past the ring, into the center