Floating Spikerush

Eleocharis fluctuans

A fine South American plant that roots in the substrate and floats at the surface: reddish stems with hair-thin olive shoots in tufts. Beautiful, extremely demanding, and almost never seen in tanks.

Light: high
Difficulty: difficult
Temperature: 20 – 32 °C (68 – 90 °F)

Leaf colour: green, red +1 green, red, bronze or brown
Plant type: stem plant
Growth rate: fast
Carbonate hardness: 0 – 3 °dKH
Placement: midground
Propagation: fragmentation, cuttings
Grows emersed: no

Appearance

A reddish-brown stem carrying tufts of hair-like olive green shoots at the joints, floating in the upper water rather than standing upright. It looks nothing like the other spikerushes and closer to a najas.

Keeping

Difficult, and honestly so: it is described as a soft-water plant that has only been kept successfully for a while, not permanently. It needs strong light and very soft water. It is worth knowing about mainly because the plant is beautiful and because the failures are not the keeper's fault.

Placement

The middle of the tank, in the upper water where its shoots float.

Propagation

By cuttings; the stems also break up and the fragments carry on growing.

Water conditions match

The water suits 1014 of 1249 species in the catalogue — these are the ones people look up most often.

Swordtail Guppies Cobra Guppy Blood Red Molly Butterflyfish Red Zebra Cichlid Julii Corydoras Red-finned Parotocinclus Gastromyzon monticola Egg-shaped Goldfish Flame Tetra Gardner's Killifish African Tetra Kenyi Cichlid Cuckoo Catfish Golden Swordtail Hypsolebias picturatus Common Zacco Labeo Bicolor Gambusia Flying barb Gastromyzon scitulus Albino Zebra Danio Geophagus Brokopondo Zebra Mbuna

Will eat this plant

These species damage plants, especially when their diet is short of vegetable food.

Bengal Loach Zebra Loach Burmese Border Loach Emperor Botia Marbled Headstander Pellegrin's Leporinus Leporinus striatus False Black Tetra Common Metynnis Mylossoma duriventre Red Whiptail Catfish Molly sphenops Balloon Molly Lyretail Molly Marble Molly Hi-Fin Platy Hawaii Platy Blue Platy Pintail Platy Black Platy Chocolate Molly Moonlight Gourami Melanotaenia parva

Will uproot it

These species dig through the substrate and pull rooted plants out.

Marble Loach Peacock Eel Forktail Loach Guntea Loach Long-nosed Loach Horseface Loach Pearlscale Black Moor Goldfish Shubunkin Painted Pleco Featherfin Synodontis Reddish Mystus Catfish Blue Acara Aulonocara maylandi Aulonocara multicolor Aulonocara Orchid Geophagus altifrons Geophagus winemilleri Pearlscale Cichlid Pearl Cichlid Redbelly Cichlid Red-spotted Cichlid Chuco godmanni Haplochromis philander Red Chromide Jack Dempsey cichlid

Matching water does not mean the fish will leave the plant alone.

The same plant with a different look: light, water and care are shared with the species.

Other varieties: Egleria fluctuans, Eleocharis fluctuans In Vitro

Scientific and other names, conservation status

Other scientific names: Egleria fluctuans L. T. Eiten, Egleria fluctuans
Family: Cyperaceae

Floating Spikerush

Tank conditions

Care and keeping