The freshwater lake which I live right by has a lot of beautiful seaweeds, so my question to anyone who could help even in a little way is would that be okay to put in my aquarium (with quarintine of course)? My other question is (question... more like questionS!) are there seaweeds that are bad for goldfish? also read this link Premature Aging of Lake do you think that would effect the plants? would I just be safer and better off if I bought them from a pet store? Thanks in advance.

A lot of planted tank enthusiasts do collect plants from the wild. It would be safe with proper sterilization and quarantine, although it would be a matter of trial and error to find out which ones will survive in an aquarium since the conditions would be so different.

As for the article, if you were to use wild plants, I would definitely quarantine them and disinfect them, but I wouldn't think the plants in themselves would be harmful, just any pollution that would be brought in with them.

I used wild plants to kick start my pond when I set it up 10 years ago. The plants were from a very clean, unpolluted lake and I didn't think I needed to sterilize them. I brought in leeches, yuck.

As for whether it would be safer to purchase them from a fish store ... probably, but even then I would disinfect them.