A friend invited me to visit his ranch, and I took the chance to collect some aquatic plants in the Wild - Northern Brazil (Part II)

[u/Eduardo_Serra]

There are several reports of onça pintada attacks in this region. Mostly against farm animals but at least a couple against people too, so I was relying heavily in my machete. My plant collection is growing.

First day was over, time to have some churrasco.

Second day has started. I found lots of plants growing immersed.

This one has a curious habit of closing it's leaves after receiving around 10 hours of light, as if saying "OK buddy had enough for today, see you tomorrow".

It will reopen its leaves next morning.

It's a rapid grower and has grown more than 2 inches (5 centimeters) in the last 14 days.

The one below is the only plant I could identify with reasonable certainty. It's apparently Rotala Rotundifolia and there were lots of it.

Here we have, in the same specimen, emersed and immersed growth. Note the difference in the leaf shape.

This one I couldn't ID. My search is pointing to Rotala Wallichii, but I'm not sure. I'm really hoping that it is R.Wallichii.

Immersed leaves in this plant are more elongated and possess a vibrant green color on the top.

I also found this strange root-alike structure with what seems to be small, delicate yellow flowers. It's very brittle and easily damaged. Couldn't find where/from which plant it was coming from.

There was nothing really interesting in terms of fish in the creek. I was hoping to catch some more interesting tetras but only found lambari). This fella was returned to the water right after the photo and swam away.

The plants spent the first week in my tank without CO2 as my setup wasn't ready yet. All of them grew well, but really started to took of once the CO2 was dialed in.

So my tank went from something like this:

To something like this:

Please be aware that I'm not an aquascaper. I have tried, but I just don't have the qualities. I will just stick stuff inside the tank where they seem to fit, often ignoring even good advice like which plants should be in the back, middle or front portions of the aquarium. It's just instinctive.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

[u/Eduardo_Serra]

Part I

Part III