Duckweed?

[aardvark1]

Was doing a water change today and noticed this plant floating on the water surface:

No new plants have been planted for at least 2 months, only new additions have been some Giant Danios.

So the question is-how/where did these plants appear from?

Eack 3 leaflet plant is floating freely with a root on the bottom.

 

[bettagurl]

it deffinetly looks like duckweed,I got about two peices on a plant from my LFS,maby thats how it got in your tank.

 

[fishcatch22]

yeah, duckweed is pretty small, i'm sure a little bit just slipped in the bag when you got your danios. it's kind of a neat plant, but it can overgrow your aquarium really fast. if you have a lot of high-light plants, you should try and get rid of it, because it can steal a lot of the light from the plants that need it. if you don't..... then enjoy your free plants!

 

[epicfish]

Er, I started out with maybe 10 of them...now, I can't see the light in my tank! I use a net and skim the surface of the tank every now and then and it still keeps coming back!

 

[Aussie_hippie_2]

I ordered plants for my pond a few months back; and about 3 or 4 leaves of this came with it. Now it has 1/4 of my pond taken over.
I have it in my betta/gourami tank and it looks great and has enough time to grow back between each water change (a lot accidentally gets taken out during water changes).

 

[coupedefleur]

People with goldfish will actually buy bags of duckweed at auctions- cheap fishfood. It's really hard to get rid of it!
I had some in a bucket with other plants and it sat a long time undisturbed. The roots got about 3" long. Very strange and spooky!

 

[Aussie_hippie_2]

I think my fish nibble on the roots because the pond one's roots are at least an inch long, while in my 10g they are about a cm long.