On Saturday, I attended GWAPA’s first meeting of the new year. The topic of the meeting was about low-tech aquariums, meaning, aquariums without CO2, high light, or excessive dosing. Since most of my tanks are fairly high-tech, it’s always good for me to remember that folks can maintain really nice planted aquarium at a fraction of the cost or effort that I do. My 54G tank is my only real low-tech tank that I try to keep looking nice, and it’s amazing how many guest we have over that marvel over that particular tank, and then hardly mention the other ones. I tell myself that it’s simply due to the low-tech tank being near the entranceway of our home.

Anyway, the meeting was great. It looks like it’s going to be a great year for GWAPA with lots of stuff in the works. The “mini” auction of not really mini at all, and I came away with some great plants to try. I managed to snag Crasula helmsii, a fine-leaved, creeping foreground plant, crypt. molmanei (for my 54G anubias/crypt tank), and a bag of HC since I still haven’t tried that yet.

Finally, I had my first opportunity to get out of the house to test my new camera, the Canon Rebel XTi. I have a lot to learn, but I really like how this camera is working so far. The pictures of Viktor’s rainbowfish are using my 17-85mm zoom lense.

After the last weekend’s GWAPA meeting, a few of us headed out to a drainage ditch, where there were supposedly a few eriocaulon plants to be found. We wound our way through some of the more rural parts surrounding Leesburg, VA, until we finally came to this run-off ditch, pictured below.

Sure enough, we found a number of plants there resembling an eriocaulon species. So, we dug one or two out to try in our tanks. I was currently without tank space to dedicate to this, so I left the task up to a few other GWAPA members. Pictured below is a bad picture of what we pulled out. Upon further inspection, it seems unclear whether this actually is one of the rare eriocaulon decangulare species found in Virginia, or whether it’s just an eleocharis species. If anyone has any insight, please speak up.

The National Zoo in Washington D.C. was kind enough to give GWAPA behind-the-scene tours of two of their exhibits – Invertebrates and Amazonia. Both tours were fantastic, so I wanted to share a few pictures from our tours.

The coral on the right is believed to be the largest captive-kept coral of it’s type.

GWAPA members looking at the salt-mixing station for all of the Invertebrate tanks.

Checking out a big tank.

Watching as they try to feed a large starfish on the glass.

Hermit crab.

Spiny lobster. They later fed this lobster while we were there.

Baby Cuttlefish being reared behind the scenes prior displaying to the public.

Fairly young arowana cruising around the service of the pool-style tank in Amazonia.

Java moss carpet, with lots of LARGE fish!

Emergent growth from the pool.

Two very large Arapaima. Amazingly, they showed us two young Arapaima behind-the-scenes that would easily fit in our conventional aquariums, albeit, not for long.

Those are big filters!

View of one of the pools, looking down on it from the rain-forest style display above.

And what would a trip to the zoo be without seeing the seals?

Well, I couldn’t manage to pull out a win for 1st place in the advanced category. GWAPA members awarded first place to Sean’s tank pictured below. Congrats Sean!