Dirty elodea (perhaps)

I noticed that this goldfish pond in my cousin's neighborhood is overgrown with what looks to be elodea or something like it. However, the pond is filthy it is very dirty and brown and there's a thick layer of unhealthy looking stuff covering the "elodea", which I know is not necessarily bad. But I was wondering if it would be ok to take a handful for my newt aquarium. I think the two things I am worried about are parasites or fungus, and stuff like fertilizer pollutants. Do you think that if I rinsed it thoroughly and grew it in a quarantine container for a while doing frequent water changes that this would take care of the pollutants or parasites I could be introducing?


By the way, my cousin assures me that his homeowner's association won't care or notice, besides its only a handful and the pond is seriously overgrown (which is why I suspect there might be fertilizer present, that, and the fact its a residential neighborhood).

I wouldn't.

I grow some in a pond myself and while it is free of algae with chytrid being a growing concern and whatnot(this pond has bullfrog froglets too) I wouldn't use them. That being said, buying elodea from your fishshop is no different as they are grown in ponds like that also.

Thats a shame that you shouldn't buy it from stores either. I was hoping to add some diversity to my couple of clumps of java moss.

Where then shall we get our aquatic flora!?

Not saying you shouldn't, but I am mentioning that if anyone is nervous about getting plants out of a clean pond then most store bought plants are not much cleaner. All depends on how paranoid you may be. Some people soak all incoming plants in a dilute bleach solution, though I wonder if elodea will tolerate that.

Other hobbyists and particular aquatic plant aquascapers often have extra tank grown plants.

My bet is that if you soaked the plants a few days in a separate tank of clean water, you could see if there are any bad guys in the plants. I think bleach would be a very bad idea. It would likely hurt the plants, and if a residue remained, it would likely hurt the newts as well, defeating the purpose.

Keeping the plants in a quarantine tank can help to identify any potential macropredators but it won't help find pathogens like chytrid.
A dilute bleach solution is commonly used to difinfect plants for terraria and to prep the plants for tissue culture. It will damage some of the delicate tissues of the plants but the plant typically quickly recovers from the damage. If there is concern about any residial chlorine the plant can then be soaked in a dechlorinator and then well rinsed.

Ed

Ed,
Thanks for the clarification. I just had visions of tank wide die-offs from bleach poisoning.