I have a pot on my lanai the I use as a water feature. It's one of those large ceramic pots, 20" tall and 23" wide at the top. I have a couple of gold fish in there, an inverted clay pot holding my corkscrew plant on and about 6 water hyacynth plants. You don't need a lot of water for the water hyacynth. I even put some in my neighbors water feature. She has a tall pot with a small bowl at the bottom that holds about 6" of water. She had problems keeping that 6" of water clean, so I put some water hyacynth in there. They only live a few weeks but they have kept the water really clean. As the ones in my large pond reproduce, I toss out her dead ones and give her some of my new ones.
If you have plenty of water for water plants but can't seem to keep the plants alive, add a few cheapy gold fish. The waste from the fish and decaying fish food will feed the plants and help them grow better. I buy the 39 cent goldfish from Walmart. My fish do very well in both water features.
