[Fishly]

My frogbit and salvinia minima are not liking my tanks even though I've tried to keep them in low-flow areas. I want to put them in a container by a window to keep them going for future use, but I'd like to keep the container low-maintenance. My concern is mainly with fertilization. I don't want to have to add ferts all the time, but I'm not sure soil would work for floaters.

Here are some of my ideas:
Use soil without a cap
Put a thin layer of root tabs on the bottom
Add some fish food or other organic waste to decompose and release nutrients
Top off the container with dirty water from other tanks

Has anyone else tried something like this?

 

[mostly moss]

I am doing something similar with some extra floating plants because I wanted something fun to look at. They’ve been in there for a couple months with minimal intervention, but I am starting to get some yellowing leaves. I did change the water and replace with some old tank water this week.

There are a couple of tiny Malaysian trumpet snails in each in that hitched a ride on the gravel, so I might drop a tiny bit of food in, but they are so small I doubt it will do much. I was also thinking about just using regular terrestrial plant food. Maybe a few drops of already mixed water + food, but I have no idea how that would work with aquatic plants. Seems like if people use osmocote it could work...

With plants, where I don’t have to feel guilty if I kill them, I am more trial and error. I will be interested to see if anyone who actually knows what they are talking about has some better ideas.

 

[Cinnamonamon]

I have to say my tanks where the frogbit explode are the ones with higher bioloads &/or the ones where I skip water changes more often. It is possible that a humid environment (lidded tanks) also helps, and keeping water circulation lower is definitely helpful. My dirted tank with a sand cap exploded with frogbit first, so I think doing a little dirt (I would cap it) would be a great route to go. After that, my other planted gravel tanks started getting a ton of frogbit when I quit doing weekly water changes. To be honest, I'm throwing away bags of the stuff every month now -- except in the 2 tanks that both have no lid...and also bad lighting I'm just realizing, so maybe that is the problem there?

In any case, I'd suggest putting a few ramshorn snails inside to create some waste, then drop in a tiny bit of an algae wafer occasionally -- once a week maybe? I also have baby shrimp in my jarariums -- when I clean the filter I rescue tons from my cleaning pails and just pop them into the jarariums instead as they're on the desk where I'm working. Then don't bother with water changes except one every several months. Otherwise I just top off when needed. I personally have tiny sponge filters in my jarariums but I don't know if they're necessary...

 

[AbbeysDad]

I'd say you add a liquid fert once a week and it would be good.