plant package!

Got a box of plants in that was trade for an aquascaping tool (the tweezers I got a few months ago are so blunt and heavy I find them awkward to use. Instead C. bought me an aquascaping set which I'll show here later but already I'm using it far more often I ever did that pair of tongs). Already note to self: don't send plants in plastic baggies. These came thru the mail fine, but I can see how plants could easily get crushed or other tissue damage this way...

I got some more downoi- tiny little bitty baby things!

I didn't know this one- it's staurogyne repens

This is creeping jenny, but a much smaller form than my current plant.

This one monte carlo- looks a tangle but if I sort it out and weigh down horizontally it could make a 'carpet' for me.

I'd never seen this plant before either. It's a hydrocotyle- also called pennywort?

Rinsing brought out some duckweed- it's quite a bit smaller than what I've already got in my tank, and some has purple undersides.

bacopa monnieri-

The two I'm really excited about are subwassertang- this is a primitive type of fern, but it looks and feels like a freshwater seaweed. Really cool, odd-looking stuff. Not so hard to grow and some people apparently get tired of it once the novelty wears off! We'll see.

And fissidens moss! I've been wanting some fissidens for a while, now.

Recalling past experience introducing stuff to the tank, I disinfected and rinsed more thoroughly this time. Mixed half/half hydrogen peroxide and tapwater in a spray bottle, doused the plants in a shallow tray.  Then rinsed the plants thoroughly in running tapwater, then dunked in a bucket with excess dechlor, then put in my smaller QT tub with sponge filter running (just for some water circulation) and a heater for overnight. (Subwassertang and fissidens skipped the first step, those I just rinsed off -they look more delicate I didn't want to risk disintegrating with the h202.) Don't want to get into the tank until tomorrow again, which is normal maintenance day.

Glad I did the cleaning. I didn't find any signs of algae and minimal damaged foliage, but there were a few pond snails (crushed 'em) and strands of java moss (discarded). Hm, it's more carpeting type plants than I had thought of. I still want to put a bit of each plant in each tank, to see how they respond and look before I decide where to keep them...

And I never really thought I'd be using the microscope so much for identification- but I just did again! The sender threw in a few extra plants, one of which he said was dwarf sagittaria but it looked like vallisneria to me. I looked some stuff up, and they do have very similar appearance- but with magnification you can see that vals have small toothed edge to the leaves. And I saw it! I saw the tiny serrated edge, little bitty hooks- and the outlines of cell structure. Awesome. (I could take a photo and show you the microscopic image but I don't know how to connect the camera to the microscope yet)