Not duckweed, any ideas?

[vaygirl]

I spied the green stuff that grows in our creek from my deck today so I went down and grabbed some off the opposite bank. It's not duckweed. It looks a lot like baby tears but I know that's not native to NJ. Any ideas? I have a pic of what it looks like growing by the bank and an up close pic.

The bright green clump along the bank dead center in the pic is the plant.


And here it is in a bucket! It lost it's pretty clumping when I pulled it up. I'm hoping a week in the bucket will help get it's shape back.

[Oldfishlady]

Look this up and see if this is it...
Floating hearts (Menyanthaceae)

Also, google your states native plants-that how I ID when I collect

[vaygirl]

That wasn't it but I followed a pic to another site and found that it's a water starwort! Thank you so much!

I tried all day looking up native and invasive NJ plants. Apparently no one in NJ cares to share that info. Although I did find that we have invasive Loosestrife growing on our creek and I'm tempted to go and start ripping it out. :)

[Oldfishlady]

Thats great, on the site that has my local native plants often doesn't have pic and that really makes it hard to ID them...lol.....

I found too that depending on the time of year I collect, that I have to adjust them to light longer- especially in the summer months, I QT them in buckets outside in full sun and slowly move them for longer periods to shade before I use them in tanks-that light shock can make them melt and die on you sometimes.
Even with good tank light it is nothing like the sun.

Nice plant by the way.......

[vaygirl]

Thanks, I'll do that. It likes to live in mud so I'm not sure it will even take to floating but it can't hurt to try once I'm done QT'ing it. I think I'll take a couple little 'stars' and see what they do once I'm sure it's not hosting any beasties and I've brought their light down some. I'll check out that bank too and see how much light it was getting. I think that side gets afternoon sun only. Most of the creek is under oak trees out there.

[1fish2fish]

I wish I could collect some plants around me. I don't think there is anything that can be grown under water in the creek at the end of our cove and in Savannah all the plants are marsh plants so you'd need a brackish water situation for those.

[dramaqueen]

Post a pic of it in the plant section of TropicalFishKeeping. I bet Byron can identify it.

[vaygirl]

I did that, thanks DQ!
I'm glad I QT'd it. I changed Whiskey's water today and I always use that blue bucket to drain into. I moved the starwort into a shallow tupperware bowl, emptied the blue bucket and went about my change. When I was done, I dumped fish water into my plants out back and set the bucket back down but I saw things swimming in the teeny water that was left. They're lil freshwater shrimp called scuds! Not that I think a scud would hurt my fish. But they like cold water and mud and I don't think they'd survive long in an 80 degree tank. :(

Because I'm a big sap, I gave them more freshwater. I can't dump them back into the creek now because I've got some pond snails in there too. I'll keep throwing dead plant matter in there. Hehe.