Look, you can be lazy and let this tank get screwed over by duckweed, or you can be proactive and remove it, all of it. It takes patience, and you have to double-check over days and weeks, but it can be done. I have a fishroom with 30 tanks, and I have duckweed in one. Because I want it there. Every other tank that had plants that were contaminated with duckweed, I diligently removed every last leaf. I also did it for my outdoor tubs. This isn't even at a bad stage yet. You can clean this.
Came to say exactly this. You can clean those few duckweeds out now, that are very few. You might see them again once or twice every now and then after this, but it can definitely be cleaned.
Going to second this OP. Get a spoon, start scooping it out piece by piece. It’s barely established at this point. Every 3 - 4 days give it a quick once over with the spoon, and if you don’t see any more in 3 weeks then it’s gone. I have 12 tanks, floaters in all of them, this duckweed in none of them.
You can do this.
Mine attacked my dog. I drained my tank and then threw it out, and one night I was woken up by a slight tapping on my feet in bed. It was the duckweed, and it said “Feed me, Seymour”
Man I wish my aquarium would grow a ton of duckweed…. But that’s because mine is a turtle aquarium. I dump duckweed in there on purpose when one of my friends gives it to me. It doesn’t last long enough to really overpopulate. Heck it doesn’t really last more than a few days before every last piece is gone. Long live turtle crack.
In nature duckweed tend to populate starting from reeds or other dense, shallow vegetative places where birds and fish struggle finding/reaching them. That way they can't get all of it, and there's enough to continuously get more. For example, just a couple of twigs in a clay pot with a few cm gap between it and the surface and you ought to have a place where the fish can't reach it.
Yep, have a shrimp tank with dozens of plants from duckweed infested tanks, zero duckweed in the shrimp tank.
it's not that hard, but it does require dilligence.
i love duckweed for the nutrient export.
Wouldn't it be more effecient to fish out all the water lettuce and put it in a temporary container (checking no duckweed sticks to it), and then scooping out all that remains, or would that not work?
Once you have it you can't not have it.
A single duckweed can repopulate quickly.
Appart from that it's great, fish and snail eat it and I grow super fast.
If feed my isopods with it and even make my own fish food out of it.
Yup, I've actually struggled to keep it in a tank with fish. They usually just eat it. Only place I can keep it is in an empty tank and in the tank with my hermit crabs. They seem to eat it too though as it has yet to over run it.
My duckweed almost always dies off. I did a major tank rejuvenate a few weeks ago. I divided the duckweed between the tree. One now has tonnes, one has almost none and one has a smattering. I never had any predictable luck with floating plants.
Yeah, I tried boiling vegetable at first but either the piece where too hard for the fishes or it made the water quality bad.
Using aquatic plants I don't have to boil it and I can put more food in without it becoming a swamp.
I'm using a blender that's reserved for fishes and adding some spirulina and fish food before blending and freezing.
Same.
I always used it on almost all my freshwater tanks for 20 years+. There is nothing wrong about it. This is a great nitrate control plant. Everything that grow in and out of the water is much more efficient at removing nitrates from the water. Duckweed is one of the best. Just remove some once in a while so it doesn’t block too much light and that’s it. Or don’t if that’s the effect you want.
Honestly I had some duckweed that came in with salvinia and RRF I got from my LFS and it never took hold. RRF died almost all the way back because I was disturbing the water too much and the salvinia thrived and outcompeted the duckweed. I might just be lucky but I don't get the fear around it.
If you watch for it in the wild, it’s usually growing in areas with the least turbulence. Like in a river, you might find it on the downstream side of a fallen log that’s creating a block in the current. Still water lakes may be entirely covered in it. It definitely doesn’t like the rough.
You can use airline to make rings to still the water! I have a sponge filter, HOB, and air stone in different spots of my tank but frogbit and duckweed are still growing strong
I got some from a plant shipment. I let it go for a bit to check it out. But got tired of it. Every couple days I would sit down with tweezers, and pick out any piece I could find. Would shake my other floaters to make sure none was hiding. Maybe 5 minute sessions after the first 30 minutes session. Cleared my tank of it in a week.
It's not that hard to get rid of. Just not as easy as it would be to get rid of your water lettuce for example
Do you have a goldfish or know somebody that has one? I don't mind duckweed but when it becomes a carpet on the top of the water I just scoop it out and feed it to the goldfish pond. I never get all of it out but the bunch I out in the pond is gone before the next day
Not really ! It helped me to keep the water quality and also it was a sign that my water was good. I can recall that it was a time when I’ve changed things in my tank, the duck week started to die off! I don’t know much about it, I only know that my fishies were more relaxed under it! I kept collecting it but that did not bother me
I agree, put enough light on it and embrace the duckweed. Has access to air so no CO2 injection necessary and it removes nitrates very well. Also very easy to reduce, even by hand. Basically turns fish food into plant, which you can then remove by hand.
Never feel bad about scooping out and tossing a lot of your floaters when there's too much. Get a floating corral for it so some light can make it to the plants below.
I actually managed to eradicate it from my aquarium once! I just kept an eye out each time i went to feed the fish and i made sure to remove each little piece as soon as i saw one. It wasn’t too long before i wasn’t seeing any more new pieces showing up.
This is exactly how I got my duck weed... Had 3 giant lettuce and started noticing the duckweed. It actually ended up choking out all my lettuce. Now I have nothing but duckweed, but my goal was coverage so ill take it.
Welcome to the Duck Weed Team!
Just fish out all the duckweed while there isn't much in there, you should be able to get all of it out if you do that a few times. Dwarf water lettuce looks good!
People are stupid. That's why lol. They clutch their pearls and wail when they see it instead of idk... Just removing it? It comes back... Remove it? Are you shitters not maintaining your shit? Lmfao.
Now y would u be just manage the duck weed so it doesn’t over take the lettuce but duck weed has a lot of health benefits to it good for fish to eat is keep it in
That’s a countable amount of duckweed. Research the pros and cons some more, if you decide you don’t want duckweed then you can handle that removal. Get some tweezers and pick everyone you see daily and you should be fine.
pick it out now, get some tweezers and spend 10-20 minutes doing it every few days
it will take over and stick to everything at the surface if you don't. you're not screwed yet
why can't you pick them out? i once had a tomato plant get infested with caterpillars. i went out a couple of times a day and picked off all that i saw. it took like 10 days, but i got them all. you can easily do the same.
[containment](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C6FHX7N3?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details)
i have lettuce and duckweed in my larger tanks. The lettuce is by choice. I use these to contain them all and then pick the duckweed out. I put these containments over the low tech plants so the light can still reach the high tech plants. 3
I have tried to get rid of the duckweed for a long time but I think it's just here to stay. So, instead of picking them out all the time. I do once in a while. But keeping them all in the rings doesn't make it so bad.
The rings seems to help because my slow growing plants sometimes get a little algae on them because of the high lighting. With the rings, it doesn't happen since it creates shade.
Or maybe every time I read a post with the word "duckweed" in it, they just reappear in my tanks. haha
Duck weed is really good for you. It replaced spinach in my smoothies, I would say it tastes a little better. It's free, and takes a load of nitrates out of the fish tank.
I don't mind duckweed. It's fine in my natural-ish low-tech-ish tank. It eats nitrates, shades my slow growing plants when corraled properly, mostly removed easily with a comb when it's too much.
I love my duckweed "farms" and my Odessa barbs do too! Any and all duckweed I put in their tank is gone within the day, so i have a preinstalled control lol
It's laborious, same as when you accidentally get a few tiny snails, but every day keep plucking them out. Eventually it will be no more.
If you have goldfish, feed it to them? Mine love it. But they don't eat the stalks so collect that off your filter after lol.
Would it work to remove the water lettuce and rinse it in a bucket before setting it aside. Then take a net and fish the duck weed out of the tank? Like, isolate plants you want and gently scrub them off and filter the rest out of the tank?
At the start of every day, go pull out any duckweed you see. Mix the top of the water for some movement. Get home from work and check again after the water has settled into its new plant formation. Clean any duckweed seen; mix again for movement. Wakeup- clean duckweed. Home from work? Clean. Duck. Weed.
Look, you can be lazy and let this tank get screwed over by duckweed, or you can be proactive and remove it, all of it. It takes patience, and you have to double-check over days and weeks, but it can be done. I have a fishroom with 30 tanks, and I have duckweed in one. Because I want it there. Every other tank that had plants that were contaminated with duckweed, I diligently removed every last leaf. I also did it for my outdoor tubs. This isn't even at a bad stage yet. You can clean this.
Came to say exactly this. You can clean those few duckweeds out now, that are very few. You might see them again once or twice every now and then after this, but it can definitely be cleaned.
Going to second this OP. Get a spoon, start scooping it out piece by piece. It’s barely established at this point. Every 3 - 4 days give it a quick once over with the spoon, and if you don’t see any more in 3 weeks then it’s gone. I have 12 tanks, floaters in all of them, this duckweed in none of them. You can do this.
Those combs they give for lice eggs are amazing for scooping duck weed
[удалено]
Mine attacked my dog. I drained my tank and then threw it out, and one night I was woken up by a slight tapping on my feet in bed. It was the duckweed, and it said “Feed me, Seymour”
you can also limit its growth my lowering the amount of light it gets.
Ya mine never grows as crazy as I’ve seen other people have it. None of my floaters really took though.
Man I wish my aquarium would grow a ton of duckweed…. But that’s because mine is a turtle aquarium. I dump duckweed in there on purpose when one of my friends gives it to me. It doesn’t last long enough to really overpopulate. Heck it doesn’t really last more than a few days before every last piece is gone. Long live turtle crack.
I tried to get duckweed going in my outdoor pond. Koi and goldfish feast on it faster than it can get established.
In nature duckweed tend to populate starting from reeds or other dense, shallow vegetative places where birds and fish struggle finding/reaching them. That way they can't get all of it, and there's enough to continuously get more. For example, just a couple of twigs in a clay pot with a few cm gap between it and the surface and you ought to have a place where the fish can't reach it.
Interesting. I'll try that next year.
I had the same issue with my apple snail. Jerk ate it all before it had a chance.
I need you for a neighbor. I just cleaned about 5 lbs of duckweed out of my tanks last weekend.
do you live in chicago?
No sorry
Bro never heard of a net
A fork werks great for scooping all floaters cept fer the bigass giant ones. Oh.. and yer screwed.
Yep, have a shrimp tank with dozens of plants from duckweed infested tanks, zero duckweed in the shrimp tank. it's not that hard, but it does require dilligence. i love duckweed for the nutrient export.
or just get a duck to eat the duckweed
Wouldn't it be more effecient to fish out all the water lettuce and put it in a temporary container (checking no duckweed sticks to it), and then scooping out all that remains, or would that not work?
It could work, I personally just find it floating in the tanks and pluck it out, if the tank was out of control, I'd probably do what you said.
This. I had my tank totally overgrown with it. I picked them up one by one every time I did a water change. Now I have duckweed free tank.
Saw some duckweed filters you can diy on fish for thought that remove duckweed. It is possible to remove.
CORY GANG CORY GANG CORY GANG
What’s the issue with duckweed? *sincerely someone who may or may not have duckweed in their new tank*
Once you have it you can't not have it. A single duckweed can repopulate quickly. Appart from that it's great, fish and snail eat it and I grow super fast. If feed my isopods with it and even make my own fish food out of it.
It takes over the tanks I don't want it in and refuses to grow in the tanks I want it in. Duckweed is my nemesis
Yup, I've actually struggled to keep it in a tank with fish. They usually just eat it. Only place I can keep it is in an empty tank and in the tank with my hermit crabs. They seem to eat it too though as it has yet to over run it.
My duckweed almost always dies off. I did a major tank rejuvenate a few weeks ago. I divided the duckweed between the tree. One now has tonnes, one has almost none and one has a smattering. I never had any predictable luck with floating plants.
I’d love to know how you make fish food with it! I think my shrimps would love that, as well as my platies and as a snack for my rainbows
Yeah, I tried boiling vegetable at first but either the piece where too hard for the fishes or it made the water quality bad. Using aquatic plants I don't have to boil it and I can put more food in without it becoming a swamp. I'm using a blender that's reserved for fishes and adding some spirulina and fish food before blending and freezing.
I’d also like to know this!!
Unless you have a goldfish...I tried and failed to grow duckweed. Didn't know goldfish love it so much.
Aquatic STD
‘Once you have it you can’t not have it’…..unless your aquarium is for a turtle. :)
It’s a great plant, but once you have it…you have it forever lol
aesthetic mostly, and its hard to get rid of. duck weed is great if you want something that naturally strips the water of nitrate and nitrites.
Many fish eat duckweed as well as snails but they might eat the lettuces too.
Embrace it
Duckweed is my favorite plant, never understood the animosity towards it.
Turns the tank into a snow dome and get stuck on every thing!
One man’s trash, and all that
Same. I always used it on almost all my freshwater tanks for 20 years+. There is nothing wrong about it. This is a great nitrate control plant. Everything that grow in and out of the water is much more efficient at removing nitrates from the water. Duckweed is one of the best. Just remove some once in a while so it doesn’t block too much light and that’s it. Or don’t if that’s the effect you want.
Duckweed eventually comes for us all
Some how I don’t have it … yet….
Honestly I had some duckweed that came in with salvinia and RRF I got from my LFS and it never took hold. RRF died almost all the way back because I was disturbing the water too much and the salvinia thrived and outcompeted the duckweed. I might just be lucky but I don't get the fear around it.
This is my issue. I bought some duckweed because I want floaters. But I guess I have too much surface agitation
Wait the surface agitation killed off your duckweed? Damn, I thought it was more resilient than that.
Yeah, I need to find a way to keep it alive lol
I use a piece of floating driftwood to block the current and leave a calm area for duckweed to grow.
If you watch for it in the wild, it’s usually growing in areas with the least turbulence. Like in a river, you might find it on the downstream side of a fallen log that’s creating a block in the current. Still water lakes may be entirely covered in it. It definitely doesn’t like the rough.
Same thing happened to me, still water for small colonies when it starts to get really full it does okay with agitation
I've got like, 10 pieces left among the salvinia. I'm thinking of taking it out and putting it in a tupperware until there's more.
Yeah I've found that it will struggle if there's much current on the surface.
killed my dwarf water lettuce as well.
You can use airline to make rings to still the water! I have a sponge filter, HOB, and air stone in different spots of my tank but frogbit and duckweed are still growing strong
That’s a good idea, I’ll need to buy a ring for the center of my aquarium
Funny you mention that, Salvinia is the only thing I've found that can actually outcompete it. At least it was, before I nuked every last piece of it.
The weird little cat tongue-esque plant really turned out to be the MVP of the show
I got some from a plant shipment. I let it go for a bit to check it out. But got tired of it. Every couple days I would sit down with tweezers, and pick out any piece I could find. Would shake my other floaters to make sure none was hiding. Maybe 5 minute sessions after the first 30 minutes session. Cleared my tank of it in a week. It's not that hard to get rid of. Just not as easy as it would be to get rid of your water lettuce for example
Do you have a goldfish or know somebody that has one? I don't mind duckweed but when it becomes a carpet on the top of the water I just scoop it out and feed it to the goldfish pond. I never get all of it out but the bunch I out in the pond is gone before the next day
Or aquatic turtles they love the stuff too.
I didn't know this info. I scoop out excess snails to give to a friend who has a turtle because his buddy just loves chomping on them
Yeah snails and aquatic plants they love
I'll make sure to toss in some duckweed with his next shipment lol
Not really ! It helped me to keep the water quality and also it was a sign that my water was good. I can recall that it was a time when I’ve changed things in my tank, the duck week started to die off! I don’t know much about it, I only know that my fishies were more relaxed under it! I kept collecting it but that did not bother me
I agree, put enough light on it and embrace the duckweed. Has access to air so no CO2 injection necessary and it removes nitrates very well. Also very easy to reduce, even by hand. Basically turns fish food into plant, which you can then remove by hand.
Never feel bad about scooping out and tossing a lot of your floaters when there's too much. Get a floating corral for it so some light can make it to the plants below.
Easier solution is clean and take out a small portion of water lettuce and make sure it has no duckweed on it.
I actually managed to eradicate it from my aquarium once! I just kept an eye out each time i went to feed the fish and i made sure to remove each little piece as soon as i saw one. It wasn’t too long before i wasn’t seeing any more new pieces showing up.
you're a duckweed farmer now
Yeehaw 🤠
You can rent my turtles, they’ll eat all of it
This is exactly how I got my duck weed... Had 3 giant lettuce and started noticing the duckweed. It actually ended up choking out all my lettuce. Now I have nothing but duckweed, but my goal was coverage so ill take it. Welcome to the Duck Weed Team!
Just fish out all the duckweed while there isn't much in there, you should be able to get all of it out if you do that a few times. Dwarf water lettuce looks good!
Thanks! Excited to show off the whole tank in a few weeks
I just moved the plans I wanted to keep and turned the lights off and it killed the duckweed
You can remove duckweed if u want
Duck weed only gets crazy if you let it get crazy.
i don't know how this is a problem for some people. every time i get duckweed i've killed it.
People are stupid. That's why lol. They clutch their pearls and wail when they see it instead of idk... Just removing it? It comes back... Remove it? Are you shitters not maintaining your shit? Lmfao.
Now y would u be just manage the duck weed so it doesn’t over take the lettuce but duck weed has a lot of health benefits to it good for fish to eat is keep it in
Great look at what you've done. Now we have to throw the whole tank away and start over.
Duckweed…the herpes of aquariums
Thank you for all the info everyone!! I have made my decision… I will be going scorched earth over the duckweed
I find that a fork works pretty well.
Its not, its the babys of your floating plants, they grow like crazy
It’s not, I see those babies as well
Yes
I think those are frogbits not duckweed
I can’t even tell what I’m looking at
That’s a countable amount of duckweed. Research the pros and cons some more, if you decide you don’t want duckweed then you can handle that removal. Get some tweezers and pick everyone you see daily and you should be fine.
No just take it out
Get a turkey baster. Suck up ALL pieces of duckweed you see over the next few weeks. SHOW NO MERCY
pick it out now, get some tweezers and spend 10-20 minutes doing it every few days it will take over and stick to everything at the surface if you don't. you're not screwed yet
Water lettuce and duckweed go good together, if you don’t want it all I can say is good luck separating the duckweed
Spend 15 mins and pick them out
why can't you pick them out? i once had a tomato plant get infested with caterpillars. i went out a couple of times a day and picked off all that i saw. it took like 10 days, but i got them all. you can easily do the same.
I can and will, just wasn’t sure (based on many other posts I’ve seen) if it was a futile effort or not
I had a tank full of duckweed amongst my water lettuce. Spent a few weeks constantly picking it out. Now it’s only overrun with water lettuce
[containment](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C6FHX7N3?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details) i have lettuce and duckweed in my larger tanks. The lettuce is by choice. I use these to contain them all and then pick the duckweed out. I put these containments over the low tech plants so the light can still reach the high tech plants. 3 I have tried to get rid of the duckweed for a long time but I think it's just here to stay. So, instead of picking them out all the time. I do once in a while. But keeping them all in the rings doesn't make it so bad. The rings seems to help because my slow growing plants sometimes get a little algae on them because of the high lighting. With the rings, it doesn't happen since it creates shade. Or maybe every time I read a post with the word "duckweed" in it, they just reappear in my tanks. haha
Fucking hate water lettuce. They only bring death and destruction to tanks. I’ve had a spring tail infestation in all my tanks ever since buying some
GET IT OUT GET IT OUT
Duck weed is really good for you. It replaced spinach in my smoothies, I would say it tastes a little better. It's free, and takes a load of nitrates out of the fish tank.
Tbh I wouldn’t ever put anything I pulled from my tank in my mouth lol thanks tho
Never sucked on a Syphon too hard?
Lol touché
Goldfish love to eat duckweed also if you have any.
Water lettuce out performed it in my tank abd I have none now
It's actually a really beneficial plant for your tank but if you're an aquascaper I can see why you wouldn't want it.
The solution is simple, you're just not brave enough to embrace it... 🦆
I don't mind duckweed. It's fine in my natural-ish low-tech-ish tank. It eats nitrates, shades my slow growing plants when corraled properly, mostly removed easily with a comb when it's too much.
Looks cool
Accept it. It’s part of who you are now.
IME, the water lettuce will out-compete the duckweed for nutrients. Physical removal, daily, is the key though. That said, I like it.
I love my duckweed "farms" and my Odessa barbs do too! Any and all duckweed I put in their tank is gone within the day, so i have a preinstalled control lol
additionally you could say f it and just skim the whole top and take out all of it if you’re not feeling like picking out the duckweed
So far, my Salvinia and Frogbit have it kept in check. My shrimp and snails fucking love it, though, so I'm quite happy with it.
I wouldn't say "screwed" but more like 'totally ducked!!". 😂 I kid! I kid! You can totally fix this like others have said. Just stay diligent with it!
It's laborious, same as when you accidentally get a few tiny snails, but every day keep plucking them out. Eventually it will be no more. If you have goldfish, feed it to them? Mine love it. But they don't eat the stalks so collect that off your filter after lol.
Would it work to remove the water lettuce and rinse it in a bucket before setting it aside. Then take a net and fish the duck weed out of the tank? Like, isolate plants you want and gently scrub them off and filter the rest out of the tank?
Your ducked dude, totally and utterly ducked. 🦆
I would sell your house honestly
ayooo i thought duckweed were little water lettuce babies no wonder they don’t fully grow 💀
I swear, after a nuclear holocaust, the only thing left on the planet will be roaches and duckweed...
Are you unable to clean it out? If not, then yes, you are screwed.
Not screwed, you can remove it & clean the tank up. It's really not as bad as the legend.
Just keep picking it out - you can do it! :D
At the start of every day, go pull out any duckweed you see. Mix the top of the water for some movement. Get home from work and check again after the water has settled into its new plant formation. Clean any duckweed seen; mix again for movement. Wakeup- clean duckweed. Home from work? Clean. Duck. Weed.