Last week, my wife and I visited a friend in Seattle, and while I was there, I was able to visit the Seattle Aquarium and the butterfly exhibit at the Pacific Science Center. Upon entering the Seattle Aquarium you come to a huge floor-to-ceiling aquarium with all kinds of fish in it. After spending some time in front of that large tank, and walked around to a number of smaller saltwater aquariums.

Many of the saltwater aquariums there are the type that many hobbyists seem to be able to procure. They have a number of fan favorites including eels, clown fish, tangs, and various other fish you’d see in the movie Nemo.

I was a little bit disappointed at the complete lack of freshwater exhibits at the Seattle aquarium, although they did have a nice focus of fish native to the northwest region. In particular, they had a number of features surrounding salmon, for which the area is well-known for.

They had salmon at various stages of their lives, along with descriptions about what wild salmon would be doing, including whether or not they would be in fresh of salt water at the time. The aquarium also exhibited a large number of salmon ladders, which during the proper time of year would show the fish returning home from the wild to their hatchery. I hope to get back to Seattle sometime in the future during the salmon migration.

And of course, no aquarium would be complete without their water birds and mammals. The otters were particularly active that day, swimming back and forth, chasing each other, and seemingly having a grand old time.

While the aquarium didn’t have a single planted aquarium exhibit, the native habitat exhibits were worth the price of admission. All of the exhibits there were well-done, and the building itself is a modern facility. Overall, I would recommend visiting the Seattle Aquarium. After visiting the aquarium, I decided to walk across town to the Pacific Science Center, where I had previously spotted their beautiful glass-enclosed butterfly exhibit.

The science center features an IMAX theater, and a huge array of science-related exhibits. This facility is no-doubt largely targeted toward kids, but I still had a nice time browsing what they had to offer. Of course, the main thing I came to see was the butterfly exhibit.

To enter the butterfly room, you have to first go into an adjacent room, where the doorways have blowers to prevent the butterflies from escaping. Once inside, you are in a beautiful 2-3 story glass sun room with a number of tropical flowering plants. At first, I didn’t see any butterflies, but then I realized that they were all around.

They had quite a variety of different butterflies, a few that I recognized from when I spent some time down in the Peruvian Amazon. I’m not sure if some of them were actually moths or not, but all were very pretty. Some folks seemed to attract the butterflies to them, so when everyone left the room they were inspected by the staff to ensure that no critters were tagging along.

I really enjoyed my visit to both the aquarium and the science center. I have a few other photos from my trip on Flickr. If anyone else has been to these places, and would like to add anything I missed, feel free to do so in the comments.

On Saturday, GWAPA had its first meeting of the year at Viktor’s house. Viktor keeps a number of tanks, all of which I believe use a soil-based substrate. This was not the topic of the meeting, however, as Viktor also collects and prepares his own driftwood, which he described his process in detail.

In general, Viktor looks for roots of fallen trees because they’re usually more interesting than many of the upper portions of the tree. Then, he soaks the wood outdoors in a friend’s pond for several months to allow it to because waterlogged, and to release some of the tannins. He has used a dishwasher to subsequently sterilize the driftwood, but has more recently shyed away from this practice because he’s wary of the drying chemicals that are often required for newer dishwasher’s drying cycle. So, if it’s a small enough piece, boiling is a good option, and he’s heard that some people even bake their wood. If neither of these is an option, scrubbing it down with hot water is usually the best you can do before putting it in the aquarium. Once in the aquarium, it’s fairly common for a white fungus to appear on the wood. This is nothing to worry about, as it will usually go away on its own, or with the help of a number of algae-eaters, which love the stuff. At this point, the wood should be usuable for years in the aquarium.

After the talk, we continued to mill around, looking at Viktor’s aquariums. He has some gorgeous rainbowfish, including the Melanotaenia boesemani seen above. We conducted our regular monthly auction, which consisted of over a hundred bags of plants and items. I think everyone walked away with something new to try in their tanks. Another great meeting!

Since I maintain a few tanks, it’s fairly common that I end up with more trimmings than I know what to do with. Many of these plants are fairly uncommon in the hobby, and often completely unavailable through regular retail outlets. I sell many of my plants through aquatic plant forums, and to local club members, but I want to make known that many of the plants I talk on this website are available for sale. Since I’m not running a nursery, the availability of any individual plant will vary from time-to-time, so please contact me if you’re looking for something in particular that’s not listed.

More information can be found on my Plants For Sale page in the sidebar, and at the top of this page.

Rotala sp. ‘Araguaia’ is one of the plants that my wife brought back for me from Aqua Forest Aquarium in San Francisco, CA.

It’s one of the nicest new plants I’ve seen enter the hobby in a long time, as it has an oblong leaf shape that turns a pumpkin orange color. In addition, it branches readily, creating a nice bushy effect without too much effort. I haven’t found this plant to be very demanding at all.

It grew in my wormstrate substrate without any additional dosing, besides CO2, but definitely grows faster and a little bit larger in my 50G with high light, CO2, and added fertilizers. I got good coloration in both conditions.

Unlike species like Rotala sp. ‘Green Narrow’, this variety grows vertically, which provides a nice contrast to the aforementioned plant.

Right now, the source of this plant is unknown, despite being named as Araguaia.’We’re in the process of trying to flower and ID it properly, but that can be a long and laborious process.

All in all, I don’t have any complaints about Rotala sp. ‘Araguaia’. Therefore, I can recommend this plant to most people as something different from the more common Rotala rotundifolia. Currently, most stores in the U.S. don’t have it, but it’s available online from hobbyists on sites like aquaticplantcentral.com.

GWAPA closed 2008 with a holiday potluck at a member’s house in Reston, VA. The club combines the November and December meetings since it’s hard for people to make two meetings during the holiday season. While the meeting was mostly a social, we did conduct a little bit of club business, electing the board of directors for 2009. I will continue on as president of GWAPA next year, so I’ll soon have to buckle down and work with the other board members to assemble a great schedule for the upcoming year.

Michael’s house was a great place to hold our final meeting because he was a basement full of tanks, which we eagerly perused. Michael has been to the Peruvian Amazon a couple times with the same company that I traveled with, and he has actually brought back hundreds of fish that he personally collected there.

It was great to look through all of the tanks at the wild South American fish, including piranha, pencilfish, cichlids, characins, catfish, and more. He also had some tanks with other species, such as his rainbowfish aquarium below.

Finally, we had a huge auction, which took us over an hour to complete. There were 144 bags of plants, fish, shrimp, etc. in the auction, with variety that rivaled the auction at the AGA Convention last month. It was a nice close to a great year in the club.