Fastest Growing Plant?

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smithj427

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Jun 10, 2008
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Edmonton, Canada
So I'm thinking of doing an aquatic plant experiment for one of my uni classes. I'm looking for suggestions of very fast growing plants. I would like something that is big enough that I can play around with it without doing too much damage too. Any suggestions?

I've already considered hornwort or even duckweed. Riccia crossed my mind too but I'm not too sure about it.

The experiment's pretty open ended plus I have a couple months to work on it but I would like something I can see results with in less than a month kind of thing.

ps. if you have any ideas of experiments involving how plants interact with their environments that you'd like me to test those are welcome too
 
Elodea. Check local lakes for this robust waterweed. I have a wild type in my tanks and it easily triples in mass every week. Started as a shot-glass sized tip and is now a few meters of jungle.

I would like to see where the threshold is for the effectiveness of nitrAte as a fertilizer, and if stray iron in ghetto form (say, a rusting piece of steel wool) is of any use to the plants.
 
Thanks for the quick response.

I've actually already considered doing something like you suggested with the nitrates but the iron sounds like it could be pretty interesting as well.

Thanks
 
if you went with duckweed, it would probly take over your tank in a week, that stuff multiplies sooooo fast, its quite rediculous... i purposly put some in my tank last year and boy did i regret it, i didnt maintain it for a couple days and long story short, my betta ended up choking on a piece of it... best betta i ever had, he lived with 2 full grown angelfish as well as numerous black neon tetras...he was a trooper for sure
 
thebestincali2000;4481635; said:
if you went with duckweed, it would probly take over your tank in a week, that stuff multiplies sooooo fast, its quite rediculous... i purposly put some in my tank last year and boy did i regret it, i didnt maintain it for a couple days and long story short, my betta ended up choking on a piece of it... best betta i ever had, he lived with 2 full grown angelfish as well as numerous black neon tetras...he was a trooper for sure
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I can't grow duckweed to save my life.

:(
 
well its probly your light if you are having trouble growing it... i got a 4 foot 10$ fixture from home depot and 5$ aquarium bulbs from walmart... ive upgraded since then but thats what i started out with
 
thebestincali2000;4481656; said:
well its probly your light if you are having trouble growing it... i got a 4 foot 10$ fixture from home depot and 5$ aquarium bulbs from walmart... ive upgraded since then but thats what i started out with
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I've had high light (65 watt 7200k CFL over 10 gallon) and low light (ambient room lighting) and still dies on me. I have a couple that were riders with my water lettuce purchase from the LFS and they aren't really growing but aren't dying either. This is in a 20 gallon with two 15 watt spiral bulbs 6500k.
 
well, im not sure what the problem is then, maybe its your water? do you have alot of fish? ive always had my tank kinda over-stocked, maybe thats the solution, lol
 
if you went with duckweed, it would probly take over your tank in a week, that stuff multiplies sooooo fast, its quite rediculous... i purposly put some in my tank last year and boy did i regret it, i didnt maintain it for a couple days and long story short, my betta ended up choking on a piece of it... best betta i ever had, he lived with 2 full grown angelfish as well as numerous black neon tetras...he was a trooper for sure
Click to expand...

Well since this isn't going to be a display tank I'm not conserned with it "taking over". Running an expriment in a full blown fish tank would be way too many variables to control so this is basically going to be a tank+water+plant and what every else that I'm testing.

So since duckweed responds quickly to ideal conditions that's why I've considered using it. Plus being in a lab setting I could potentially have any set up I wanted. Low light/high light/ high tech/low tech.

Any other suggestions?
 
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