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Hi, everyone,
We had a great, very relaxing, mostly beach
vacation in Mexico. It felt good to spend so much time doing
nothing!
My plant expeditions were disappointing. I
tried collecting plants in a couple of rivers north of Ixtapa, but there were
none that I could find in the places where I looked. There was little in
the way of even bog plants growing by the water's edge of these two
rivers. That day I forgot to bring along my test kits, but I suspect that
the water was quite hard and alkaline. I had a little more luck with
Coyuga Lagoon which in in Pie de la Questa north a lttle ways from
Acapulco. I found a Bacopa species, what looks to be maybe an
Alternanthera species, and another plant which may be some type of
Ludwigia. I tested the water using a Waters of the World test
strip and got a pH of 7.2, an alkalinity of 80-120, and an off the charts total
hardness reading of 425ppm. The hardness reading is so high I'm sure due
to the close proximity of the ocean.
I also checked out a couple of aquarium stores in
Acapulco. The largest is a place called Bio-Aqua right in the middle of
town off the town square. The salesperson told me that there are four
aquarium stores in all in Acapulco, and that this store was the largest.
The others, he said, were much smaller. One of the other shops wasn't very
far away, so we checked it out, and they had only about 10 tanks, if
that.
Bio-Aqua had a much smaller selection of fish than
we have is the US. They had many of the usual South American
tetras, some South American cichlids, a few Africans, lots of guppies with
little color, some nice mollies, platies, and a few odditities, including
a beautiful Leporinus species that grows very large according to the
salesperson and is very aggressive. They also had a lot of goldfish which seem
to be quite big in Mexico and the fish of choice in resteraunts. The
plant selection was limited to a few common varieties that you would find in the
US: Cabomba, Myriophyllum,
Echinodorus bleheri, Elodea, and a Cryptocoryne
that looked to me like affinis.
As far as NEC is concerned, I think it is fine to
have Claus and Lee as speakers, and we could probably use a business
meeting. I don't know how many members will be there, but I think it is
good to keep the membership posted as to what is going on. On the other
hand, in past years, the more informal times we have had together have also been
fun. I was hoping for a "show and tell" time when people could bring
pictures and/or slides of their tanks. Could we fit in a "show and tell
time" some where in the
weekend?
Mary
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