[Zapins]

The meeting started off nicely with several nice door prizes and copious amounts of sweet buns, bagels, and ice tea. After chatting in Amanda's fish room for about an hour we went on a hike through the local nature preserve. We saw many aquatic ecosystems including marshes, bogs, streams and ponds. We identified several species of aquatic plant including an interesting plant like algae.

Later on in the day as we were on our way out of the park we bumped into a (painted ?) turtle laying her eggs. We took videos of it and counted 8 eggs.

Back at at Amanda's house we were given delicious fresh home grown lettuce and called it a day.

Unfortunately my phone died so I couldn't upload any pictures or videos. If anyone from the meeting has any please upload them for those who missed the meeting!

 

[asukawashere]

I have to extract the turtle footage from my camera... just not anytime soon, because I am a lazy bum. Alternatively, you could hit up Kristina for her video, because I think she had a better angle anyway.

Turtle was an eastern painted turtle, FWIW. Looked it up after the meeting.

The algae was most likely from the genus Nitella, by the way (if not that particular genus, almost certainly something else from the Characeae). It's a freshwater macroalgae. Might be interesting to try in a tank sometime; from where it was growing it obviously doesn't need a ton of light, but given that it's in CT, it may not like tropical conditions much... still might be worth a try in an unheated tank. Certainly a better-looking algae than any of the others I'm currently growing!

 

[redsea]

Sounds like fun! I would love to join the club as I am from the area!

 

[Zapins]

redsea where are you located? We always welcome new members to the club.

 

[kingjombeejoe]

It was a lot of fun. I look forward to the next one.