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Plants from George Booth

I recently won the "George Booth Lottery" due to having the best sob story.
My 225 gallon had a hair algae problem caused by my overfertilizing. I
couldn't get it reined in quickly enough so I finally lost my mind and tried
simazine.

Needless to say, this killed the algae. It also killed all my vallisneria,
bocapa, most bunch plants, and all the mature leaves on the older plants. My
crypts, anubias, and bolbitius were the among the only things to be spared.
I watched about $250 of Dan Quakenbusch's plants dissolve into about $75
worth over a 6-8 week period.

Since I have seen so much debate about George's strict Dupla methodology, I
thought a independent review might provide some unbiased opinions on his
plants. Like most, I looked at the pictures on the web site and thought "I
wonder what they looked like prior to clean up for the picture:-)".

The box arrived on schedule and was obviously packed with care. Shipped in a
fish cooler, each plant wrapped in wet newspaper and placed in a ziploc bag
that identified its contents. (a welcome change)

Anubias barteri. Largest I have every seen. 24" tall (rhizome was kept
vertical in a corner it appears. Rhizome is over 1/2" in diameter and over
16" long. Deep green leaves in excellent condition (this can be said for all
of Georges anubias though)

Large clump of Anubias coffeeafolia. Like the other anubias, it is gorgeous
and has several new leaves unrolling.

2 large clumps of Anubias barteri var nana. Assuming you consider 8" long
1/4" thick rhizomes to be large:-)

Large Microsorium pteropus Java fern. 12-14" leaves on 6-8 rhizomes that
ended up spanning about 14" when I tied them up.

Bolbitius heudelotii fern. A roughly 10" rhizome with a dense population of
12-16" tall leaves.

Crytocoryne blassii, Various crypt wendtii, all perfect

Echinodorus tenellus "Pygmy chain sword". looked great, but I hate planting
this stuff.

Echinodorus quadricostatus. green throughout, none of the usual brown
spotting/streaking.

Limnobium laevigatum (frogbit), beautiful, but not compatible with my
skimmer cups, felt guilty throwing it away.

This post is getting a bit large, so I'll condense all of the following down
to nearly perfect samples: Sagitarria pusilla. Eusteralis stellata. Mayaca
fluviatilis. Hydrocotyle leucocephala. Ludwigia sp. Rotala rotundifolia.
Rotala macrandra. Bacopa monnieri. Samolus parviflorus. I hadn't seen some
of these in person before now. They all looked better than the pictures.

There were enough plants here to fully stuff a bare 110 gallon. It was quite
a challenge getting them all in a "1/3 planted" 225 gallon. I paid less for
these than any plant shipment in the past and got enormous amount of mature
plants in addition to the usual "starter" sized plants. If George offers to
sell plants to you, jump on the chance.

Jon Wilson
recent Dupla convert, glad I got an order into Daleco yesterday