Teacher dumped scam seeds into tank

[The endler guy]

So I’m making a brackish mudskipper paludarium for my school and my marine bio teacher was supposed to buy dwarf hair grass, mangrove seeds, and marimo algae; he instead bought the scam carpeting plant seeds! I told him how they were a scam and told him to return them (he bought them from Amazon.) The next day we had a bomb threat at school (yah fun!) so I didn’t have that class, the very next day in ap bio I saw weird specks so I asked the marine bio teacher and he said he put them in! Are they going to be able to grow in brackish water because I really don’t want to have to deal with them, I’m pretty pissed at the teacher for not listening to me.

[DiscusLover]

On 10/17/2022 at 8:35 AM, Aiden Carter said:

So I’m making a brackish mudskipper paludarium for my school and my marine bio teacher was supposed to buy dwarf hair grass, mangrove seeds, and marimo algae; he instead bought the scam carpeting plant seeds! I told him how they were a scam and told him to return them (he bought them from Amazon.) The next day we had a bomb threat at school (yah fun!) so I didn’t have that class, the very next day in ap bio I saw weird specks so I asked the marine bio teacher and he said he put them in! Are they going to be able to grow in brackish water because I really don’t want to have to deal with them, I’m pretty pissed at the teacher for not listening to me.

I'm not 100% sure what scam seeds are but most of the time its going to be hairgrass. Hairgrass will grow in brackish but like any carpeting plants it will take time for it to grow. Hairgrass will grow but at a really slow pace without co2. But most scams won't grow so I won't even bother.

[The endler guy]

I’m fine if it’s hair grass (I’d like that, I wanted to grow it on the land area anyway!) but a lot of the time they are advertised as hair grass and aren’t even a aquatic plant!

I really don’t want them in the tank

[The endler guy]

Update!! They are sprouting, teacher said he would remove him last Friday (he didn’t) but he said he was going to remove them today (doubtful) 

[gardenman]

Much of the time the scam seeds are hygrophila seeds of one species or another. Hygrophila seeds have some medical properties, so they're harvested commercially and then repackaged for aquarium use. They can make some decent looking aquarium plants. Just don't let them out into native waterways.

[TheSwissAquarist]

On 10/17/2022 at 5:35 PM, Aiden Carter said:

So I’m making a brackish mudskipper paludarium for my school and my marine bio teacher was supposed to buy dwarf hair grass, mangrove seeds, and marimo algae; he instead bought the scam carpeting plant seeds! I told him how they were a scam and told him to return them (he bought them from Amazon.) The next day we had a bomb threat at school (yah fun!) so I didn’t have that class, the very next day in ap bio I saw weird specks so I asked the marine bio teacher and he said he put them in! Are they going to be able to grow in brackish water because I really don’t want to have to deal with them, I’m pretty pissed at the teacher for not listening to me.

Hats off to you for doing an aquarium at your school! I managed to gift a 5 gal and some shrimp to my headmistress who then put it in her office window😉.

[The endler guy]

On 10/18/2022 at 10:20 AM, TheSwissAquarist said:

Hats off to you for doing an aquarium at your school! I managed to gift a 5 gal and some shrimp to my headmistress who then put it in her office window😉.

Yay we have like 5 20 longs but I chose to do the 29

On 10/18/2022 at 9:41 AM, gardenman said:

Much of the time the scam seeds are hygrophila seeds of one species or another. Hygrophila seeds have some medical properties, so they're harvested commercially and then repackaged for aquarium use. They can make some decent looking aquarium plants. Just don't let them out into native waterways.

I’m sure they look great but I was wanting to do a mangrove mudskipper tank

[TheSwissAquarist]

On 10/19/2022 at 12:54 AM, Aiden Carter said:

Yay we have like 5 20 longs but I chose to do the 29

I’m sure they look great but I was wanting to do a mangrove mudskipper tank

Is the water already brackish? If not you could do some cool freshwater thing!

[nabokovfan87]

I am pretty sure they won't grow in brackish conditions.  Hopefully someone with some experience there can confirm or explain why/why not for us!

Edited October 19, 2022 by nabokovfan87

[The endler guy]

On 10/19/2022 at 1:33 AM, TheSwissAquarist said:

Is the water already brackish? If not you could do some cool freshwater thing!

Yah I have 2 freshwater at home so I wanted to do something different and help people love fish and what better way to do that than land fish? Also I was planning on doing green tree frogs (they live in salt marshes, in my backyard; the Chesapeake bay!) and mangroves

On 10/19/2022 at 2:45 AM, nabokovfan87 said:

I am pretty sure they won't grow in brackish conditions.  Hopefully someone with some experience there can confirm or explain why/why not for us!

Most have sprouted so hopefully they will die because of the salt

[TheSwissAquarist]

On 10/19/2022 at 1:04 PM, Aiden Carter said:

Yah I have 2 freshwater at home so I wanted to do something different and help people love fish and what better way to do that than land fish? Also I was planning on doing green tree frogs (they live in salt marshes, in my backyard; the Chesapeake bay!) and mangroves

Most have sprouted so hopefully they will die because of the salt

I think @Zenzo has been testing a lot of plants in brackish water recently.

[Cinnebuns]

My understanding is that the scam seeds will sprout but will then melt and never come back. So you will have it look nice for a short period of time and then nothing. 

[gardenman]

On 10/25/2022 at 6:40 AM, Cinnebuns said:

My understanding is that the scam seeds will sprout but will then melt and never come back. So you will have it look nice for a short period of time and then nothing. 

Not all of the time. I bought some for $0.99 off eBay way back when, and they were aquatic hygrophila. They grew well, looked good and flourished under water. They got overtaken by some other plants later on (two years later maybe?) and disappeared, but if I could find what I did with the leftover seeds, I'd do it again. Now having said that, some are pure scam seeds, so you don't really know what you're getting, but the ones I bought were real aquatic plant seeds. I was very impressed by them. (Note: They may have been the often illegal version of hygrophila polysperma which is viewed as an invasive water weed, but they grew well and never left my tank, so whatever.)

[The endler guy]

On 10/25/2022 at 9:13 AM, gardenman said:

Not all of the time. I bought some for $0.99 off eBay way back when, and they were aquatic hygrophila. They grew well, looked good and flourished under water. They got overtaken by some other plants later on (two years later maybe?) and disappeared, but if I could find what I did with the leftover seeds, I'd do it again. Now having said that, some are pure scam seeds, so you don't really know what you're getting, but the ones I bought were real aquatic plant seeds. I was very impressed by them. (Note: They may have been the often illegal version of hygrophila polysperma which is viewed as an invasive water weed, but they grew well and never left my tank, so whatever.)

Even if it is a nice looking aquarium plant, I was trying to go the more desolate look

[Janoš Bećar Pecaroš]

To me ,it looks like the tank belongs to the teacher and not you, so do what the teacher wants. Either way, if the tank is in the classroom, I think the whole class should decide how to go about it, not just you.

[TheSwissAquarist]

On 10/26/2022 at 4:22 PM, Janoš Bećar Pecaroš said:

I think the whole class should decide how to go about it, not just you.

Don’t overcomplicate things! You’d be surprised how annoyed teachers get! I expect you also need to take into account how much @Aiden Carters classmates know about aquariums 😉.

[Janoš Bećar Pecaroš]

On 10/26/2022 at 10:19 AM, TheSwissAquarist said:

 how much @Aiden Carters classmates know about aquariums 😉.

They are there to learn, what better way to learn than doing it.

To me it seams that op isn’t flexible at all and wants to do it his way or all hells breaking loose.

[TheSwissAquarist]

On 10/26/2022 at 6:18 PM, Janoš Bećar Pecaroš said:

They are there to learn, what better way to learn than doing it.

Correct! 

[The endler guy]

On 10/26/2022 at 10:22 AM, Janoš Bećar Pecaroš said:

To me ,it looks like the tank belongs to the teacher and not you, so do what the teacher wants. Either way, if the tank is in the classroom, I think the whole class should decide how to go about it, not just you.

So I understand what you are saying but I also spent upwards of 50$ in the tank and my teacher was just confused and I wrote this right after he did it and I was upset and stressed.

[TheSwissAquarist]

On 10/26/2022 at 6:27 PM, Aiden Carter said:

I was upset and stressed.

Understandable.

 

On 10/26/2022 at 6:27 PM, Aiden Carter said:

but I also spent upwards of 50$ in the tank

I'd say that if you've spent 50+ bucks, you should have a say in what happens! Especially if the teach is confused.

Good Luck and keep us posted!

[The endler guy]

On 10/26/2022 at 12:18 PM, Janoš Bećar Pecaroš said:

 

To me it seams that op isn’t flexible at all and wants to do it his way or all hells breaking loose.

I feel im fairly flexible (we put some clams we were going to dissect into the tank which I personally did not think was a good idea) but the seeds were just dumped in a pile in the corner of the land section of the tank

[TheSwissAquarist]

On 10/26/2022 at 6:30 PM, Aiden Carter said:

I feel im fairly flexible (we put some clams we were going to dissect into the tank which I personally did not think was a good idea) but the seeds were just dumped in a pile in the corner of the land section of the tank

What are the future plans for the tank? I remember something about mudskippers...

[The endler guy]

On 10/26/2022 at 12:30 PM, TheSwissAquarist said:

 

 

Good Luck and keep us posted!

This was in a different post but we got tree

[TheSwissAquarist]

That mangrove is doing really well!

[The endler guy]

On 10/26/2022 at 12:31 PM, TheSwissAquarist said:

What are the future plans for the tank? I remember something about mudskippers...

That’s the plan! Possibly bumblebee gobies or halfbeaks, green tree frogs, and of course shrimp!

On 10/26/2022 at 12:33 PM, TheSwissAquarist said:

That mangrove is doing really well!

We got it yesterday hopefully it stays that way