Aligator weed, Eurasian Water Milfoil and Giant Salvinia are problems in texas for many reasons. The first reason is, they have no natural predators or other preventives to stunt their growth. On top of this they are all prolific reproducers too. Many of them don't have to pollenate to reproduce they can clone themselves, often times just by breaking apart, which often happens when removal is attempted on them. Since they form such high populations, the decaying plant matter often causes decreases in oxygen levels in the water system. They also clog irrigation pipes, impede boat activity and ruin bodies of water for recreational use.

-Ahab

   An invasive aquatic plant is an aquatic plant that did not develop in a certain geographic area. While a native aquatic plant is located in the geographic region it developed in. While invasive plants can cause many issues for the environment, native plants have many benefits. For example native plants provide cover for fish and nesting material. This allows the heterotrophs of the ecosystem to have more luck with reproducing. Native aquatic plants also help oxygenate the water, and provide food for some animals

- Ahab

   When our aquarium was first set up our water was fairly turbid, our ammonia was high and the fish were fairly shy. Now our nitrogen cycle has almost finished stabilizing, we are having trouble with the nitrite as opposed to the ammonia. The water lost much of its turbidity when we installed a filter. Best of all though our fish have acclimated to the tank, our grourami now does not hide, it swims around at about mid-level in our tank, and is one of the most active fish in the tank. Our kuhli loach now preforms acrobatics after we feed it, and our cory catfish cruise around the bottom. All of this has made me want to own a fish tank, unfortunately my current situation does not allow it. I think the most interesting thing that has happened in my group's tank is when we lost our loach, we had gone a couple of days when we first got him with out seeing him, and since hiding is a normal thing for loaches to do we didn't worry. After the weekend though and we still hadn't seen him, we began to worry, after tearing up our tank looking for him, we finally found him, he had been trapped inside a rock.

-Ahab

   Water quality is an important factor in the health of your tank, but an even greater factor in a town's ponds and lakes. A city with bad water risks its inhabitants getting sick, and failure of crops and livestock in the surrounding area. It's important to know how water is assessed though, and the steps taken in doing so. The first step in assessing water quality in a lake should be just a general scan of the lake, is there any clearly visible source of pollution, does it look like there are chemical spilled in the water and how much litter is around the lake. Along with that water samples should be taken to test the ph levels and algae counts. Doing this is a relatively cheap way of doing a general test of the water with out paying money for chemical panels, which are more expensive. If the water does look like its polluted, and the ph test are coming back off, and the count of algae is showing low diversity it is time for the chemical panels. You will need to know exactly what is wrong with your water source in order to fix it, this accuracy is most easily achieved through specific chemical tests.

Signed, Ahab