cannot get watter lettuce to multiply

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this problem started last winter,when we had exceptional cold whether for long periods.
in (hollywood,fl )
anyway all my healty and productive watter lettuce (3-5 ") had just dwarfed to the size
of a dime.
After winter, i had a alge bloom.so i drained pond (20' x 12') ,removed goldfish (about 45 )
cleaned pond with pressure cleaner,refilled with well water ,made a filter from a 55gal plastic drum ,media is 2 bags 3/4 rock,4bags pea rock ,heavy duty air cond filters (that sit on a heavy duty grid about 7" off the bottem .
Water is pumped in (1200 gph) from top of 1-1/2 pvc that leads to the bottem of the drum.
Comes out top of drum 1-1/2 pvc to the water fall that is about 24" above water in pond.

I added microlift per instructions to the 1-1/2 pvc that leads to the bottem of filter.
Also added a water clearifier later per instuctions same way.

I purchased water lettuce,water hyacinths on e-bay 3x .
They look very healthy when i get them,But after a while, they just dwarf out. and will not
mulyiply.

I even put some in a protective ring 3' x 3' so the fish can't get to the roots (which i never seen them do). same thing.

By my pic in my profile can see how water lettuce flourished before.

I am thinking it may be due to the microlift or the clearifier ?
Should i do a water change berore i add anymore plants ?
BTW the water is clear.
 

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addy1

water gardener / gold fish and shubunkins
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You might be suffering from too clean of water. The plants need some nutrients to live.
That is my "educated" guess.

Nice looking pond there and welcome
 
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well with 45 goldfish (average 4-5 ") all summer long ,i would think they would produce enough nutreints for thr plants.?
Other plants i have like my floating hearts are even growing above the water ,and have big yellow blossems with only a few hrs of sun in the mourning.
The two first pic dont show ,but i have a full roof above the pond.
My wind generator,and a 50watt solar panel that supply's power for all my lights, and pump
another one of my hobbies.!

The roots on the water lettuce do not look like they have not been even nibbled on.

An interesting thing i noticed is the lettuce have about 3 daughter plants each, but will not seperate from the mother plant ? been attatched for over 3 weeks ?

I am planing to buy some more water lettuce, and keep them in a separate sm. kiddie pool.
add a liquid water plant fertilizer,including nitate of potash,(i heard works great on floating water plants) and make a experiment.
I will have to look around the web for a good liquid ferilizer i can use.
 

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we had a similar problem this year with water lettuce. don't know why, but they just would not grow. our water hyacinth, on the other hand turned into frankenplants. we keep them separate from the koi area, and the water nitrate level runs at around 10 to 20 on the API scale. we got plenty of the plants, but none developed past about 3 inches across and were flat. if anyone knows the reason, we would appreciate the feedback.
 
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I had a similar issue. mid summer I removed 3/4 water lettuce of the pond surface.. after that they kind of .. meh... have the same issue you did... Not sure what the problem is... but with cooling temps, water lettuce doesnt have a shot to do much anyway
 
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the lettuce was normally colored but i just didn't grow. not much branching either. i wonder what nutrients were missing? now last year we did get some yellowing. we have a ton of fish so i thought we would have plenty of nutrients availalbe. go figure.
 

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