This weekend, we made a trip down to New Bern, North Carolina to visit family. Since we were blessed with some beautiful 65 degree days, we decided to visit a park on the Neuse River where pine bogs and forest were all around. Of course, I couldn’t resist hiking through the surrounding areas to do some exploring and snap a few pictures.

With pine needle litter everywhere, I can only imagine how soft the water must be here. As damp and marshy as this looks, there really was not an unpleasant smell whatsoever. This is why I believe this is a bog, as opposed to a swamp, where water sits, allowing organics to break down and release gases. The bog flowed directly into the Neuse River, where Cypress trees lined the water’s edge. Even despite the lack of summer leaves, the roots and water provided for a very nice landscape. I was hoping to find a few pitcher plants to photograph, but I imagine it is still too soon after the latest frost for

those. I did, however, see quite a few Hydrocotyle vines starting to emerge along the wet ground. I

bet the entire floor will soon be covered with these as the weather warms. One of the neat things about this specific location is that the Neuse River is brackish, so among the freshwater plants and species found in the bog, where the two met you could find more saltwater-related things of interest. There was plenty of barnacle-covered driftwood, mussels, and clam shells populating the sandy beach.

I hope to get back down to these bogs sometime later in the year when it’s warmer to see the contrast the seasons have on these areas. If anyone has any suggestions for places to go, please comment to let me know!

Previously, I’ve posted pictures of my Blyxa aubertii flower. Now, I’ve noticed that some of the Blyxa Japonica, that has been floating toward the top of the surface for some time, has also flowered! From my untrained eye, it’s quite difficult to tell any difference from the two flowers, but I suppose that why the two plants are so closely related.

In any case, it’s always nice to open up your aquarium hood, and see a pretty little flower waiting there for you.

What may be even more incredible is that this is flowering under 1.5 year old normal output flourescents that are being overdriven. I have a mix of 6500k and 10000k temperature bulbs. I’ve noticed in other tanks that 10000k bulbs have caused flowering, so I’m guessing that these bulbs are holding up okay, even though they’re being overpowered.

This weekend, GWAPA held its February meeting at Rob’s house in Herdon, VA. This month, GWAPA demonstrated how to aquascape a tank from start to finish. Ghazanfar and Jeff (president and vice president) worked together to scape a mid-sized tank. (I think it was a 30-40 gallon tank.) The substrate was Soilmaster Select (Charcoal) with a layer of peat underneath. Rob also had some of our wonderful California porous mossy rock, and a number of a plants from the auction. As you can see, the scape turned out pretty nice. It’s glosso in the foreground, with dwarf sag and blyxa japonica in the midground. Finally, pogostemon stelleta ‘broad-leaf’, p. yadabeanus, and some crypts make up the background. After looking at the pictures, the only thing I’d change would be to remove the crypts. Eitherway, pretty good for a couple hours work!

Coming into the meeting, I knew that AaronT (coresponding secretary) wasn’t going to be attending, so I took it upon myself to make sure the auction had plenty of plants. Of course, lots of people bring plants, but Aaron always brings so many exotics that I wanted to make sure it was interesting. Mainly, I just wanted to make sure that I continued to spread around the P. yatabeanus that I had gotten in an auction 2 meetings ago. All-in-all, I brought about 12 bags of plants. What I didn’t expect was to end up the auctioneer! I did my best to keep everything moving along, but I have a new respect for those folks who can get up and really sell items in auctions.

I haven’t blogged in a little while due to an unexpected trip out of the state due to a family emergency. When these things happen, they don’t always fall conveniently right after a water change, or when your CO2 tank is 100% full. As happens, the timing for my 20G high was quite unfortunate. I had kind of let this tank go a little bit anyways because it seems that some kind of algae spore is embedded in the bogwood, and won’t go away. I didn’t want to pull out the wood because it makes a great shelter for the Apistogramma viejita in this aquarium. So, with an algae outbreak already creeping up, no water change for 2 weeks, and my CO2 tank running out, I came home to this mess.

I’m not really sure what I’m going to do here. I think I may just tear the whole thing down and start it fresh. I could make this a non-planted tank, specifically for the purpose of breeding apistos, using Rain/RO water and peat to lower the PH down to ridiculous levels. Or, I might rescape the whole thing, without this bogwood, once my ADA order of Amazonia comes in.

Eitherway, I guess this shows that while there are a lot of low-maintenance planted tanks, some of these higher light, nutrient dependant, CO2 sucking tanks can really go south in a short time if not tended to. This isn’t a terrible thing because I love the constant change of this hobby, but it’s a good headcheck that there’s more at work in these little biocubes than might meet the eye.

The Capital Cichlid Association’s February meeting was one of the best meetings I’ve been to in a long time. This month’s meeting was less of your typical meeting, and more of a photography workshop. The organizers setup three tanks, with three beautiful African cichlids in them. Surrounding the tanks were the proper barriers, backgrounds, and flash equipment to get the perfect shot. Basically, they setup the right environment so that you can come, armed with your best camera, to try to make the shot.

The meeting opened with three brief talks, describing a few tips for photographing fish. Basically, get as much light above the tank as possible. Shoot at a F11-F18 to make sure the whole fish is in focus. And, if possible use at least one flash unit over the aquarium, and possibly a second flash on the side as a “fill” light. Other than that, clean your glass, be conscientious of reflections, and if all of that fails, clean the image up in Photoshop.

Here’s an image that I captured. I had to do a little bit of Photoshop work to clean it up, but overall I think it looks okay. Not the greatest, but okay. If nothing else, this is one beautiful fish!

Of course, after the workshop, we had the regular mini-auction and raffle. I decided to try daphnia for the first time. So far, the fish love ’em — big surprise!