My water lettuce has roots about 12 inches long, can I trim these? My pond is 100 gallon so the root system of these plants is taking away swimming area for the fish.

TLC, you can probably trim them back some; I've never tried, but know the fish eat them.

Give it a shot on a couple and see what happens; obviously you don't want to remove "all" the roots.

Honestly though, I wouldn't think the roots bother the fish.

I've noticed that when I buy water lettuce (and water hyacinth) by mail order, that when I open them up, the roots often fall off. Those plants survive despite losing most of their roots. Once in a pond, fish often eat most of the roots off. I think you can cut back the roots. As long as you leave a few inches of roots, the plants will recover but may be slow to multiply while they recover from the root cut.

I tried to hit a happy medium. I trimmed off about 5 inches on the longer ones. We will see how many "croak". I can see in the pond a little better now, they were so long that they were drifting across the pond! It is amazing how much algae that those roots will hold :o

My water lettuce is all nub roots and are still doing fine. My koi tore them to pieces before I made a plant and frog seperate area. I don't think trimming would bother them at all.

All my floating pond plants have yellowed but I am not sure if it is b/c I trimmed the roots. I am going to take some of the extra plants and put into a tub by themselves to see if the improve.

That is what I did. I alternate between my pond, a tub for plants only, a tub in the pond the fish can't get to that has some bullfrog tadpoles in it, and a tub for pregnant shrimp, frog tadpoles and duckweed. It has been working pretty well and gives me a reason to spend more time outside. The more time me and the little one spend swapping plants the less likely we are to get in trouble with mommy. :(

Cheesycook,
How big is your pond and what is the tub made of that you used to put the floaters in?
:)

The pond itself is 700 gallons. The tub in the pond is actually a long planter box about two foot by 10 inches with a few holes drilled in it. The outside tub is just a large detergent pail I had sitting around. There are no fish but a single tadpole and a solar powered aerator in there. Works great but the pail gets alot of algae. On the plus side it is great to scoop out and chase my daughter around the yard screaming "BRAINS< BRAINS BRAAAAAIIIINNNNNSSSSS!!!" :lol: