This is possibly the most valuable of floating plants. It is equally useful for holding the spawn of surface egg layers and sufficiently penetrable to a retreat for young livebearers.
Riccia forms a tangled mat of interlocking fibre-looking greenery, to a thickness off in. It should not be allowed to get any thicker; otherwise decay lack of light and passage of water.
Owing to the closely packed formation of Riccia, it is to clean of algae, but snails will hold it in reasonable bounds.
Care should be taken not to ramshorns with the collection of snails. They just love to make a meal of it.
A oxygenator, it multiplies by separation; one separates from the parent and becomes a parent itself, and so on.