The smallets floating plant, with only one root. It's the fast growing
plant on earth, it can reduplicate in four days!
A blanket of duckweed can easely block the surface of a pond
channel or lake.
It grows 20 time faster then corn,and it takes more phosphorus
and nitrate in then every other waterplants including the algae.
In this way it can be used for cleaning polluted water (biological cleaning).
Duckweeds are now used in Bangla Desh and Yemen for water cleaning.
As a natural water purifier, it removes as much as 99 per cent of the
nutrients and total dissolved solids in wastewater. It also reduces the acidity
of water.
a promising new commercial aquaculture crop.
These plants are highly prolific combined with a high protein content.
Fresh duckweed plants appear to be a complete nutritional package for carp
It therefore can be used as fishfood or, of course, duck food or as an
organic fertiliser. Duckweed can be eaten but it has has little taste of itself,
Its solid fraction has about the same quantity and quality of protein as soybean meal,
and it grows 20 time faster then corn . It tollarates even highly polluted water,
but in that situation the plant produces only short roots
These roots have the function of anchor,and are not used for taking up minerals.
-1 Watermites
-2 Cristella mucedo, a a bryozoan.
-3 Hydra
-4 Piscicola, a leech.
-5 Branchipus schaefferi, a fairy shrimp
-6 Plumatella, a bryozoan.
-7 Apus, a arthropod
-8 Planorbis planorbis, a snail
-9 Stickelback
-1 Duckweed
-2 Frogbite
Ecological cleaning of aquaria
In this way it can also be used for cleaning an aquarium without the using
of mechanical pumps. These pumps filter out the microscopic live completely
between the roots of the duck weed waits a glassworm on its prey.
preventing algae growth
If a green blanket of duckweed covers the water's surface then algae growth is
strongly reduced as the duckweed prevents sunlight from reaching the water, and so
paritaly stops photosynthesis and major oxygen production by the algae.
Growing conditions
Sunlight and a phosfor and nitrogen makes this plant grow
rapidly, even in brakkish or highly polluted water.
Wind and streaming water prevent the growth, as the roots
do not reach the bottom. The spread to other ponds is mostly done by ducks
and other aquatic birds.
During Wintertime
Wenn it starts freezing it sinks to bottom, in this way protecting itself.
The rootless and lesser duckweed are the mostimportant members of the duckweed family
The big hunters from the duckweedjungle: newts, nymps
and the watertiger. These animals are the biggest predators of the
duckweedjungle, but the hydra is the most abundant.
the duckweedjungle
Between the roots of the duckweed a large collection of water animals find shelter.
First of all newts and
the toadpoles.
Waterinsects and daphnia , diaptomus
and cyclops find a hidingplace.
Hydra is the biggest killer of these small animals and the king
of the duckweed jungle
It's tentakels are hanging down from the
roots of the duckweed. Smaller pray like rotiferia are found in abundant amounts,
and small fishes find a shelter here for the big hunters, like:
