Trip to the River

[Phil]

Hey Everyone,

Today Abbey and I went to the local river in search of anything interesting.

Unfortunatly... there wasnt much.

There was probably 2 types of val, one strait edged and one with a wavy edge, 2 different types of elodia, one with very fine small foliage, hornwart, what i think was cardamine, some really random algae type plant azolla and mabey 2 other types that we werent sure about.

Here is a photo of one of our stops, i forgot the camera most of the time so only ended up getting this photo.

Cheers Phil

[Chuckie]

is that Castlereagh?

[Phil]

Nope that is out at windsor Thats probably the best place we went to. We went to castlereagh but they were doing roadworks (on a dirt road?) and there was some weed mucher down in the river removnig stuff so we thought, mabey next time

[Bettarazzi]

Lovely. Do you live around there?

[Phil]

Sort of, its not too far away ^_^

[Ned]

wow... and you get most of your plants from a river?

thats so cool... wish i could be able to do something like that!

[Phil]

Hey Ned, actually no none of my plants come from the river!! We both got a few samples of some things today test them in aquariums :)

[Ned]

this is so interesting, sorry for the million questions, but what do you test them for and how do you test them? like what is the final outcome meant to be of getting these samples and testing them?

[Phil]

ohhh, when i said test i meant to see if they would survive at tropical temperatures. The water was pretty cold, they they might not grow etc.

I got abit of the dwarf elodia (thats what it looks like) and some of that algae stuff. Didnt bother with any val yet, but its really nice val i think :)

[Ned]

ok i think im starting to understand... you pull a bunch or two out of the river, throw them in a heated tank and see if they survive?

what do you do if they do survive?

do you do this kinda stuff often? id love to try it one day, bardwell park has a little river kinda thing.. i might check that out.

[Phil]

Nope this is the first time we have done it. If they survive in our tanks then we can grow them... thats about it lol

[Callatya]

I have a few coldwater tanks, so it doesn't bother me as much :)

[Daniel]

Cool, its not in the angfa database, but if you compare plant pictures you might be able to tell if theyll do well in your aquarium. I want to do the same thing locally but nothing close to me has vegetation, i think the georges river is too salty.

[Ned]

you cant wash the plants or something or do they need that salt water enviroment to survive?

hey Phil, hows that elodia stuff going in your tank?

[Celeste84]

you've given me ideas for my local creek now LOL but i doubt anything will survive in a tropical tank as the water is always freezing here (since there's only water in the creek in winter).

[Ned]

try it you never know what you can find!

[bluebetta]

One day i was swimming in the river and a few stalks of elodia came floating past. There is also heaps of duckweed. I wouldn't get anything out of the river to put in a tank though. Never know where it was been or what has been in with it.

[Stuart Elflett]

You'll find that some plants will melt quite drastically when moved from one habitat to another - differences in PH, temp, hardness, etc, all affect that - but will regrow in a version more suited to the water they're in... plants ARE quite adaptable...

That said, it also pays to be aware that you CAN get some hefty fines for removing plants from waterways, especially in parks and national parks - it pays to be well off the beaten track if you want to do this kind of thing... (not that I'd advocate for or against, of course... or sweeping nets through creeks, rivers and streams to see what shrimp and fish are in there... )

If in doubt about the legality, contact your Dept. of Environment & Heritage, they have some handy little brochures on what you can and can't do - including getting a permit to harvest plant material for testing purposes... (they're testing - I'd hate to suggest you'd get a permit and accidentally harvest more plants than you need to hand over, and end up researching them yourself...)

(We do printing for the SA dept, so I get to look over a lot of their material... :(