Azolla or duckweed??

[Mmathis]

If you had to choose only one.....

Is either one more or less nutritious?

Which grows faster or is easier to grow?

I think Azolla is more attractive, but what does that matter since it's never in the pond long enough to make a difference, LOL?

 

[JohnHuff]

Well, I wouldn't know which one is more nutritious or whether I'd even want to eat it but since it was you, I trawled the internet and found some recipes for duckweed. Here's one from another forum:
http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/showthread.php?t=143306
Interestingly, it says that it relieves flatulence. So if you have a problem with flatulence, you could try it... or eat less beans.

 

[j.w]

Azolla grows mass fast! I had taken most of it out of a tub I have and threw it in my pond for the fish maybe a week or so ago. The next day it was already growing back like crazy. Now it is thick all over the top of that tub again. It is a superfood fed to chickens, livestock and fish and also used as fertilizer. They are even trying to figure out how to feed it to us humans possibly in outer space.

Found this on the net about it:

Super Meal at Färgfabriken

Färgfabriken, a center for contemporary art and architecture in Stockholm, has invited Erik Sjödin to work with his ongoing project Super Meal this summer.

Super Meal is a project that revolves around growing, cooking and eating the water plant Azolla. Azolla is a fern that lives in a unique symbiosis with a cyanobacteria that enables it to fix atmospheric nitrogen. Under ideal conditions it can double its biomass in two days, which makes it one of the world’s fastest growing plants. For centuries Azolla has been used as organic fertilizer in rice paddies in China. Lately it has also been introduced as fertilizer and animal fodder in other parts of the world. However, despite being a rich source of nutrients, it is still more or less unexplored as an ingredient in food for humans.

Recent research on Azolla as a component of a space diet for habitation on Mars is the inspiration for Super Meal. Among other things, the research shows that it is possible to grow all the food a human needs in an area of about two hundred square meters – less than one hundredth of the area that the average American’s food production occupies today.

At Färgfabriken Super Meal is presented in the form of a collaboration between Erik Sjödin, Färgfabriken and Färgfabriken’s Café. During the summer Erik will experiment with cooking food in the café out of Azolla grown on Färgfabriken’s courtyard. During the spring and summer Erik has has also been working with the project at Kalmar Konstmuseum, at the experimental art and agriculture collective Kultivator on the island of Öland, and on his balcony in the Stockholm suburb Årsta.

Super Meal is based on substantial research on Azolla and agriculture, however the intention has never been to dish up any finished solutions, but to communicate an idea about a future where eating and farming is different from what we are accustomed to today.

 

[Mmathis]

Well, I wouldn't know which one is more nutritious or whether I'd even want to eat it but since it was you, I trawled the internet and found some recipes for duckweed. Here's one from another forum:
http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/showthread.php?t=143306
Interestingly, it says that it relieves flatulence. So if you have a problem with flatulence, you could try it... or eat less beans.

LOL! I meant, for the fish....

 

[fishin4cars]

Duckweed! Azolla is rarely eaten by fish at all. It grows thick masses that clog all the oxygen exchange in the container, and it can survive out of water for quite some time and can get in unwanted area's fairly easily. Koi eat duckweed and ducks eat duckweed it's also manageable to some extent.

 

[JohnHuff]

LOL! I meant, for the fish....

In that case, you should have said if your fish could only choose one
Now you have me thinking about Duckweed soup and Azolla salad.

 

[shakaho]

Here's some information of the nutritional value of duckweed.

 

[crsublette]

I never knew fish would eat the Azolla, but I guess they could if hungry enough.

Definitely choose duckweed. Duckweed is a very common fish food grown for aqua-ponic folk to help control nitrates since their systems can sometimes obtain crazy high nitrate levels between plantings and harvestings. While growing the duckweed on top, there are even some fellas that have incorporated duckweed with large raft (also called deep water culture, DWC) containers that act as a fines particulate filter, if correctly built.

There are many many different varieties of duckweed. Some varieties have quite small foliage and others have quite large foliage.

Duckweed is actually considered to be an illegal plant to culture, in some areas, due to its hardy invasive ability. Be careful on who you tell about growing it.

 

[JBtheExplorer]

I like duckweed, simply because I remember as a kid going to ponds with loads of duckweed and seeing frogs heads sticking up out of it.

 

[CountryEscape]

I noticed a few bits of duck weed in the stream. My son said his dad had duck weed on his pond really bad last year, and I meant to ask him to bring me some! I want to see what the koi will do with it.

 

[j.w]

You won't have it long CE

 

[Mmathis]

Duckweed! Azolla is rarely eaten by fish at all. It grows thick masses that clog all the oxygen exchange in the container, and it can survive out of water for quite some time and can get in unwanted area's fairly easily. Koi eat duckweed and ducks eat duckweed it's also manageable to some extent.

Larkin, my GF eat the azolla I put in for them. They eat the duckweed, too. And there's nothing left of either plant, so I can't tell if they have a preference.

But it seems like the DW grows faster, so guessing that if you're growing it for the fish to eat, then something that grows fast would be better.