the worse thing you will encounter is pond snails... Some say a bleach
soaking kills the egg sacs, and will make/force the snail to release from
the plant... I can say they are a nuisance, but they aren't entirely that
bad, if you have a/some clown loach(es), they will curb the number to zero
pretty quickly.... or you can pick them out manually....

Either way, I'd take the fern... the algae isn't worth worry about, you can
pluck off the uglies and more will grow...

--
RedForeman ©®




"Trina" wrote in message
...
Hi All,

I have a question in regards to the 'safeness' of donated plants from
suspect tanks.
I work with someone who offered to give me some java ferns. I'm not
usually one to pass up something free, but last year when I was at
this person's house, I saw the tank. It pretty much reflected the
whole house.
The tank looked to be a 20gal. There were 4-5 goldfish in there and
there was so much green algae in there you couldn't even see the fish.
Should I be worried about them? I have a quarantine tank (yay!) set up
and obviously would house them in there before subjecting my pets to
them but I don't want to muck that one up if it can be avoided.
This same person also offered me his 20gal tank (fish are dead or..?).
It is currently sitting outside in -30 to -45 weather (should kill
everything?) and I'm wondering how well the sealing would hold up
after being exposed to those temps. Anyone have any thoughts?

TIA,
Trina
Yukon, Canada
44gal/tall/pent/fresh
http://mekong.connections.yk.ca/mila...LiquidZoo.html