Thanx Okiimiru. Lots to choose from. Signed up at Aquabid as well, good looking out! Quick question: Does it have to be a "planted" tank in order to sustain "floaters", or will they be able to survive and flourish on their own?

"Does it have to be a "planted" tank in order to sustain "floaters", or will they be able to survive and flourish on their own?"
Duckweed? It'll get caught in anything that's underwater, like plastic plants or tank decorations. The thing that makes the little duckweeds harder to remove from planted tanks than plastic-decorated tanks is you can take the plastic decorations out and boil them for a minute or two to kill the duckweed. Or just let the decorations dry and then brush them off. If you want to avoid that, get one of the larger floating plants. Duckweed is less than a quarter inch in diameter and one of the tiniest floating plants. The larger ones don't get pushed completely underwater as easily. I defy someone to keep a healthy water hyacinth submerged. :D

Floating plants don't play nice with submerged plants, actually. The floating plants block the light (AKA food) from the submerged plants and the submerged plants eat the nitrogen (AKA food) that would otherwise go to the floating plants. They're competitors. Personally, I think it's better to have a tank with only one. Or at least understand not to put a floating plant directly over and blocking the light of a submerged plant.

Floating plants are unique when compared to other plants in a few ways.
1. Floating plants float up at the surface, which means their growth is not, like other plants, limited by the presence of dissolved carbon dioxide. They have direct access to atmospheric carbon dioxide. Dissolved carbon dioxide is around 2 ppm in your average tank water while atmospheric is 350 to 400 ppm. Normally carbon dioxide is the limiting reactant in plant growth but you can see why it's not for floating plants.
2. Floating plants don't have roots buried in substrate. This makes them a little bit more similar to algae than rooted plants in that if the nitrogen in the water column runs out they're unable to compensate by absorbing nitrogen through their roots. Measure your nitrate concentration. If it drops down to 0 ppm the floating plants may be starving. There is an exception to that statement, though; some plant species have a symbiotic relationship with nitrogen fixing bacteria and can sequester atmospheric diatomic nitrogen N2. For example azolla does that. Source: http://www.massnature.com/Plants/Nfixers/nfixers.htm But in general unless you know your floating plant has a symbiotic relationship with a bacteria to be able to capture atmospheric nitrogen, it's a good idea to keep nitrate above 0 ppm (for the plant to eat) and below 30 ppm (for your fish's health). You can increase nitrate by feeding more food and decrease nitrate with water changes.

What this means in plain English: As long as you have good lights and nonzero nitrogen in the water, the floating plants should grow quickly and healthily. Often, because they are not limited by CO2 like purely submerged plants are, floating will grow faster and work better at cleaning your tank. The faster a plant grows, the more nitrogen it removes from your water column, the less you have to do water changes because of nitrate accumulation. There are two ways to remove nitrate from a tank: water changes and by plants eating it and turning it into new leaves. The more new leaves you have, the less nitrate is present to force you to do water change. So it's possible to actually set up a tank where the thing removing the nitrate from the water is all the plants growing, not through your physical water changes. More info can be found in "Ecology of the Planted Aquarium" by Diana Walstad.

For lighting tips please see my comments on this topic: topic5058.html But in general floating plants are undemanding. If they start to turn brown, come back to that link there. But they're usually the easiest type of plant to supply light for.

I really like floating plants. They're great to give to new plant growers. They flourish without special substrate or fertilizer. They clean your water and, like all plants, will compensate for ammonia spikes by switching from nitrate to ammonium as food whenever it's present. Which means if a fish dies and you don't find it and remove it, it's still mostly okay. This is very different from when people only have bacterial filtration. Bacteria takes a lot longer to respond to an ammonia spike (like a week) so that's days and days more of toxic ammonia exposure that your fish have to suffer through. If you have just one plant in your tank it'll get rid of ammonia in hours. See Table 2: http://theaquariumwiki.com/Plants_and_B ... Filtration
If your tank is unplanted, I recommend a floating plant. Unlike rooted plants you don't have to do anything special for it or change your tank at all. Just plop it in and wait a while, then once it grows just scoop half out and either sell it or throw it away. Easy as pie.

I really like frog bit. Since it is pretty fast growing, it should be a good ammonia absorbent. However, it does grow long roots, which you said you don't want. Personally, i think the roots hanging down is a cool look.

I agree with Natalie about the amazon frogbit. Yes it would be great at eating ammonium. Yes it also has long roots; if you yourself like it, go for it. I don't know about trimming the roots. I've never tried to trim them. You could try it with one of your plants and if it dies, sell all the rest.

"And lastly I have the aquarium hoods with the 2 short screw in bulbs (15w), where might i find florescent bulbs to replace these, that are good for the plant growth you spoke of (not too expensive lol) "
Personally I don't use the lights that come with the tank. The bulbs for them are like $20 each and they're so expensive initially. And overall they produce less light than shop lights bought at hardware stores. So they're inferior, have a higher maintenance cost, and cost more initially. I don't use them.

I have some 4 foot long tanks, myself, and a 20 inch ish 10 gallon. I got my lights at Walmart (32 watt 4 foot long T8 fluorescent fixture for $10) and at Home Depot (same thing, $20). I get my bulbs at Home Depot (Daylight Deluxe full spectrum T8 32 watt, $10 for two).
Links:
http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1v/R ... reId=10051
http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1v/R ... reId=10051
The walmart light isn't listed on their website that I can find the link to, but if you call ahead and check they might have it in their store.

For my 10 gallon tank the lights weren't exactly the same length. So I just put some packing tape over the top of my tank and rested the 18 inch undercabinet lights on top of the tank and have had no problems. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v415/ ... /004-4.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v415/ ... /008-3.jpg