Water Lettuce...

[driverswanted07]

Has anyone had any experience with water lettuce in their tanks? Does anyone have any tips for growing it? I wanna use it to help save guppy fry.

Thanx.

[blitzen25bm]

you are going to need a lot of light. you can try cabomba or hornwort. javamoss would be really easy too.

[elgecko]

I grow it in a 10 gallon tank with 1.5 watts of light. They are not any where the size of ones grown outside in the sun. They only get about 2" across.

[karfixer]

I've tried-and failed- growing it in my 40G tank before. When I did this the tank was semi-covered and had 2WPG-don't remember water parameters anymore :( The Water Lettuce did inspire my Gold Gouramis to spawn and I still have over 50 of the kids-I've sold 100! From what I've gathered the plant is easily burned by the heat from the lighting and this is why it's difficult to grow in an indoor aquarium. A thick stand of some Cambomba or Anacharis should give your Guppy fry some safe cover to hide from the hungry parents and is pretty easy to maintain as well.

[JP457]

I agree with what was said. Water leatuce is really a pond thing. just get some anacharis. it grows like crazy in almost any conditions and if you just let it float the guppy fry can hide in that. its what I do.

[125gJoe]

This should be over in Aquatic Plants area, but no matter.. This plant needs high lighting. I have to agree that it's more of a pond plant. I've seen lots of it down here in the lakes and rivers... It will not do well if your pond is shaded.

[RedTez]

Hi ALL

I had great success with water lettuce - so much so i ended up with the tank surface literally covered in it. I had a friend close to hand to whom i bailed out the first 'crop' of unwanted light hoggers but after that we both were throwing it away at an allarming rate.

Economics made we switch from metal halide to fluorescent lighting and from then on it died back and eventually dissapeared. The tubes burnt the leaves by the time i had them close enough to light up the tank.

I am using lillies at the moment but the flowers stick them selves on the light tubes and the number of runners up to the floating leaves are also annoying. I tried that 'fairy dust' floating plant sold at pond outlets once, that was fine until it burnt itself out and went to a brown mush after 3mnths or so.


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Best Regards ALL

[cpr4cpu]

water lettuce loves high light intensity, but lower temps (like that hasn't been said ten times already).
For Metal halide pndants it will be fine (so long as the light is far enough away not to fry it).

For guppy fry I like java moss on the bottom of a bare glass tank, or growing some sort of hairgrass, microsword, or hornwort for the fry to hide in. Anacharis is good too, but all my fry like to hide near the bottom, and anacharis does best when floating (for me anyway)