Hi I recently bought some pond plants and noticed these tiny little green things floating on the top of the tank the other plants were in. I also noticed little plants poking out of the water that looked like a pine tree but they were on a vine that was under water. I asked about them and I was told that the pine tree things actually produced the green floaties. I asked what they were called and the owners did not know. She merely said the fish eat the floaties. She gave me a few of the vines and a bucket full of the floaties. She said the vines multiply rapidly so would only let me have 2. I do not see the vines growing bigger or more abundant at all and the green floaties are now turning brown in the sun. I looked up pictures but they seem too small for duckweed and the meal pictures are not right either. These almost look like clovers. They are flat, no roots. But only about a cm in size. Circular. Any ideas??? :unsure:

Could you get a photo of them? The floaters have no roots? Most floating plants have roots so that rules them out. If not for the lack of roots roots, I might say salvinia or frogbit could look as you describe.

The vine-like plants with pinetrees sticking out sounds maybe like parrot feather or marestail. Neither produce little floating things (unless parts of the plants that are not viable).

Look up photos of those plants and see how they compare to what you have.

OK I looked up parrot feather and marestail and the viney pine tree things definitely look like parrot feather. The owner of the pond shop told me that the parrot feather produced these little floatie things. I even asked another clerk there and he corroborated what she said. But I thought it was weird that there was nothing on the vine thing that looked even remotely like the floaties.
OK now I am going to look up the other thing you mentioned. Thank you.

:blink:
OK I looked up frogbit and salvinia and it is definitely neither of them. These things float individually and are much smaller than either of the plants I looked up. The floaties have no roots. It looks like someone mowed down a lawn full of four leaf clovers (only the heads, not the stems) and threw them into the pond individually. No roots, no vines. They are smaller than my pinkie nail. Maybe the size of a #2 pencil eraser around. Very small and flat. ?????? But they are all uniform. The meal pictures I saw showed some plain looking leaves.

These "things" that they said came off the parrot feather could just be pieces of the parrot feather leaves? Do they look the same? If they're just leaves, they are not viable. Can you get photos of the plants in question? Without roots and/or connecting stems (vines as you call them), little floating things would not be viable either.