Re: Duckweed Deliverance!

["S. Hieber" <shieber at yahoo_com>]

Mike Wickham had good results vacuuming duckweed off (out
of) his aquarium:

> . . . I'd
> net out what I could, 
> use a hair comb to scrape it off the surface, and dab it
> out with my fingers. 
> No luck. It took a lot of time and it was impossible to
> remove all of the 
> duckweed.
> 
> So I took a 3/8" flex hose and attached it to a wet vac.
> It works perfectly 
> for sucking duckweed off the water surface. In a few
> minutes, the tank was 
> clear. I did a touch up every day for about a week, to
> grab the stray piece 
> of duckweed that came floating out from under some plant
> leaf. 

I have never had duckweed just blow in the window, it's
always arrived with a bag of fish or new plants.  But it's
usually noticeable before it gets out of control.  I have
had good results just by skimming with a net, and then
dabbing out the renegades that continue to show up for a
few days.  But if I let it start to multiply for few days
after I notice it, there are more renegades and it takes
much longer to to finally be rid of it.

I never tried vacuuming.  My problem has never been *how*
to get duckweed plants out but *finding* all the stragglers
that seem to hide God knows where, adventiously budding in
some secret niche or crevasse.  I suppose surface skimmers
and overflow boxes would work as well as a wet/dry to
collect the buggers  -  but not that eheim surface
extractor thing aka the instantly clogged surface device
;-)  .

Scott H.

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